2010 - Looking Forward

I’m not usually one for New Year’s resolutions (well, I am, but they’re never realistic, and I don’t usually plan on sticking to them). But, you know, it will soon be 2010, and this seems like as good a time as any to try and turn over a new leaf on certain things :) But no promises, because I’ll probably have given up before the month is out:

1. I’d like to read at least one novel a week, and either vlog or blog about each one. This may require me to spend less time procrastinating on the internet, and more time doing my pre-internet hobby, reading, but that’s a sacrifice I’m becoming willing to make :)
2. I’d like to become more fit and healthy. So, vary my diet to include things other than pasta and bread when I’m at uni, and get ‘some’ exercise, instead of none.
3. I’d like to work towards more regular communication with friends that I’m beginning to lose touch with, and let the friends and family in my life know that I appreciate them.
4. And this is more of a goal than a resolution, but I’d like to get a 2.1 for my degree, and know what I plan to do for the next year or two before my exams. I have some rough ideas, but things need applying for and setting in motion.


I was going to do some predictions for the next decade, but if the noughties taught me anything it was that virtually every big moment or trend was unexpected for most of us. So perhaps there’s not much point in guessing. I think a lot of the big problems of this decade – global warming, the credit crunch, Afghanistan/Iraq, terrorism and Islamaphobia – won’t be ‘sorted’ in the next one, though hopefully things will improve. I think Obama will be a good President, though won’t achieve as much as people hoped. I think Cameron will be an unpopular PM, though people will take a while to decide this, and that David Miliband will be hugely popular at first, and will then become increasingly controversial. I think, as many people I’ve spoken to recently do too, that communication will become ever more varied and easier, that we’ll increasingly spend more time talking to like-minded people on the other side of the country or world than those around us, and that this will have both pros and cons. There will be bigger and more world-absorbing interactive game experiences, where fiction and reality become blurred. TV and film will become more interactive and visual-focused to try and stand-out from the web. The news will continue to follow internet trends. Online will be the place to be.

That’s all for now :)

2009 - Looking Back

(Warning – it’s probably going to be a double-post day).
It’s the last day of the decade (well, that’s debateable, but I say it is), and I feel I should be getting all reflective and ponderous, because that’s what History students do at times like this. The ‘noughties’ have been a hugely complex ten years, though, so I’m not quite sure what to say. Or perhaps every decade seems like this when you look back on it so immediately. I’m going to do this the easy way, and talk about the ten things that I think we’ll remember about 2000 – 2009 for some time to come. I’ve probably missed out a lot of important things :-s But, in no particular order:

1. 9/11. I remember that the millennium was full of talk about the things that would dominate the next ten or hundred years, all these plans and hopes, and then something smashes, out of the blue, into the world’s consciousness in 2001, and everything changes. Of course nothing ever ‘just happens’, there’s always a build-up of history and policies, and the reactions to them, but for most of us this seemed to come out of nowhere. Deaths are tragic, civilian death tolls that run into the thousands even more so, but it was done in such a visual way, and it was broadcast so widely, that it’s difficult to imagine people forgetting about 9/11 for hundreds of years. And it’s difficult to see America and the UK getting out of the direction of foreign policy that was chosen afterwards for quite some time. The aftershocks could still be felt in thirty or forty years. But perhaps everyone says this about the tragedies that happen in their lifetime. I wonder how the next generation will see it.

2. The media got . . . wider. I’m not sure how to explain this, just that there are more television channels than ever before, and more ways to access news and shows online . . . it’s bizarre now to think that most of the UK only had four TV channels back in 1999. Now, even if you have the standard Freeview package, there’s 30 or so. Wider means more choice, but perhaps it also means those shared shows becoming less frequent . . . certainly, back in the day of two or three channels there were certain TV ‘experiences’ that the whole nation had, and everyone talked about it. Even now, Doctor Who, Wallace and Gromit, reality show finals – some of these draw in 18 or 19 million viewers at their peak. These TV ‘events’ seem to be declining, though, and I’m not sure if we’ll experience TV in the same way by 2020.

3. Reality TV, and 'interactive' TV in general – celebrity culture, the changes to the music scene brought in by these ‘vote for the next music sensation’ shows. They dominate more in America, perhaps, than they do here, but there’s been a steady decline in dramas and more serious documentaries for these cheap to make, and crowd-drawing shows. I’m as guilty of watching as the next person, and some of them are genuinelly entertaining, but when they are so easy to make, and often more popular, than more ‘quality’ TV, what will this do to the industry in the near future? It will be interesting to see if any channel, apart from the BBC, will still be making dramas by 2020.

4. We wanted to communicate with each other, and we did. Whether it was writing a blog, or uploading videos onto Youtube, twittering, finding a new unsigned favourite singer, or abandoning TV for short-films made by someone in their back-garden, the middle-man was cut out as we talked and got creative. This is a trend that I hope does continue. The world seems like a much smaller place.

5. Celebration of nerd culture. Suddenly nerdiness was cool. Comic book movies and sci-fi reigned at the box office. Animation was king. People expressed their inner-nerd on the internet, and TV and the movies scrambled to keep up. You were left wondering how many of us had been nerds all along, hidden in the corner as the cool-kid minority ruled.

6. The environment and global warming became big news. These topics have rarely been out of the classrooms, news and documentaries for most of the decade. We saw extreme weather and natural disasters, we began to worry about where our food was grown, our carbon footprints. Sci-fi show after sci-fi show began to focus on how the world would be, not in two hundred years time, but in fifty. Sadly, 2009 has ended with little answer from the politicians, so everything still seems up in the air.

7. The credit crunch. Proving once again that house prices cannot just go up and up and up . . . I still don’t understand the ins and outs of it, because I don’t have a head for finance, but I think it’s safe to say that it will be a while before we, especially those of us in the UK, see our countries recover.

8. Hurricane Katrina, and the Boxing Day Tsunami. Both already seem partly forgotten by anyone not directly impacted, but I wonder if each won’t be seen with renewed importance as the years go by. Both were devastating, though on two different scales. The response to each said a lot about society in this decade, both good and bad. I think the two disasters will be re-visited a lot by the historians of the future.

9. President Obama’s campaign. Whether his presidency will be remembered fondly remains to be seen, but the whole grassroots and new media movement that helped get him into office was exciting. Suddenly everyone wanted to be American. Politics had never been so interesting. It was thrilling to feel part of something like that, and I’m not sure there’ll be another campaign with that ‘hopeful’ feel for a long time – we tend to get cynical of these things second time around.

10. And I guess that, on a personal note, this was the decade where I did most of my growing up. I was 12 when it started, and I’m 22 now, so the ‘noughties’ saw me through high-school, sixth-form and most of university. I made lots of the decisions about who I was, and what I liked, and where and what I was going to study, that will probably affect most of the rest of my life. I made some good friends, watched my younger siblings grow up, and am hopefully at least a little more balanced than I was ten years ago :) So these are ten years that I’m certainly not planning on forgetting.

The Christmas blog

These blog posts seem to be getting further and further apart . . . perhaps it’s just that not much happens from day to day in the holidays for me, because I’m very much a stay in and watch TV/ Youtube/ read a book/ pointlessly surf the web until the wee hours of the morning/ play on the Playstation kind of person. All the days become a blur, and then there isn’t much to write about.

But it’s almost the end of the decade, and I want to write one of those long and reflective posts in a couple of days time, which I’m sure will even make me fall asleep when I read it back in a few weeks time :) So I feel I should fill this in with everything that’s happened recently. Which actually won’t take that long:

1. Snow – and lots of it! Perhaps three or four inches, which I think is more than I’ve ever seen before, and it’s not melted in about a week now. For a few days it was amazing, and magical, and we built a snow-thing, took tons of photos, had snowball fights. Now it’s just icy and a little annoying – we’re not exactly snowed in, but we live on a hill, and both driving and walking down it feels a little scary at the mo. Everything takes twice as long.

2. Christmas!!!! I still manage to get excited, more with the anticipation of it than anything else. I think it was Michael Buckley who said it feels different every year once you’re older, and there’s no point in forcing yourself into holiday giddiness that you don’t really feel – just go with the flow. He’s totally right. I still insist on ‘tradition’, as do my siblings, much to the amusement of our parents. There’s a set list of Christmas Eve Christmassy videos to watch (the tape is from 1998, and wobbles like crazy!) – The Snowman, Father Christmas, The Bear and The Tailor of Gloucester. We eat fish on Christmas Eve, turkey and trimmings, then Christmas pudding for Christmas lunch, smoked salmon and salad, followed by trifle for tea, and cake for supper. We get ‘Christmas sacks’ instead of stockings – pillow sacks full mainly of numerous but cheap goodies from charity shops and joke stores – at the end of our beds on Christmas morning. Mum used to buy all the stuff for them, but now we’re given the money to each buy the contents for each other – it becomes a competition to make it the best. Dad still puts his Santa hat on to deliver them – the only night of the year when we’re all in bed before 11.30pm. So it’s the sacks in the morning, usually some Christmassy film (Muppet Christmas Carol is fast becoming a new tradition), lunch, very slow present opening afterwards – we all go one by one and oooh and aaaaah over each gift we’ve got. There are seven of us, so this takes a long time. My nan died earlier this year, but she used to insist that we stop to hear the Queen’s Speech at 3pm. I missed it this year, it felt a bit strange to watch it without her. And then it’s the Christmas tea, and usually a full schedule of TV specials to watch afterwards. This year’s line-up could have been jaw-dropping, and was still really good, even if it didn’t quite live up to expectations. Doctor Who was brilliant up to the last five minutes, which just seemed to push it a little too far . . . . but I can’t really decide until I’ve seen the second half (on New Year’s Day – I have such crazy mixed feelings about it at the moment. There’s so much David Tennant stuff on tv at the moment that it’s as if the nation’s gone into mourning. He’s everywhere. And however much I tell myself it’s a TV show, I know that whether it’s a brilliant, emotional final episode, or a stinker of a let-down, I’m going to be in a bad mood because of it all weekend :) ). Strictly Come Dancing Christmas special was nothing too exciting, and Poirot was a let-down, mainly because it was such a dark, grisly episode that it felt totally inappropriate for festive viewing. It was probably the gloomiest Poirot I’ve ever seen, so it was strange to show it on Christmas Day :-s
But, overall Christmas was great. Present highlights include some awesome kids’ books (Morpurgo, Snicket, Gaiman) from my parents, one of my favourite films (The Girl Who Leapt Through Time) on dvd from my brother, and lots of other bits and pieces – chocolates, bath stuff etc. Good times.

3. Project for Awesome – the nerdfighters taking over Youtube by spamwowing charity videos to get them into the most discussed list – awesome. So, so much fun. It was the first year I’d got involved, both making a video and spending a scary amount of the 48hours tuning into the livestream and commenting away . . . my parents thought I was slightly mad, but it really did feel exciting, like properly being part of the community :D Especially when Maureen Johnson encouraged us to the top of the twitter trending topics for half an hour or so – wow in so many ways :)

4. Total lack of work so far :-s Well, I’ve done a little, but I’m pretty much going to have to write a couple of thousand words every day from here until I get back to get that first draft in when I said I would :(

That is actually pretty much it :-s The last two weeks. Doesn’t seem like much when you put it like that. I’ve read a couple of (mainly trashy) books, watched too much TV, spent too long online. And I’m going to work for the next ten days, I have a dissertation to write.
*crosses fingers in hope*

The Chistmas tree is up . . .

Yes, the Christmas tree is looking at me from across the sitting room, all blue-lit and shiny :) My sisters decorated it this morning - I thought it best to stay away, as these things can get a bit cut-throat . . . I hoovered the house and watched last night's comedy awards on ITVplayer (so, so happy that Outnumbered won three awards, and that the little 8year old girl from it won best newcomer). And for the rest of the day I avoided doing important things, and instead watched trashy TV (Joe won Xfactor - it's disturbing that I actually care), surfing the internet (I've decided that I want to move to Canada after watching Twilight. The scenery is gorgeous, and the visas look relatively easy to get. I know it was America a few weeks ago. I'm a very fickle person), and, ummm, reading Twilight (yes, I know :-s I was very much persuaded into it by a friend. And my belief that you can't truly make fun of something until you've experienced it. Verdict 134pages in? Once you get past the grating prose, and remember that it's meant to be from the point of view of a rather pretentious and self-absorbed teen, it's not as bad as I feared. I mean, elements of her relationship with the Cullen are disturbing, especially his posessive nature and age, and I like it more when he's not around, but aspects of it are embarassingly reminiscent of my own hormonal teenage years - admittedly, more at 13 or 14 than 17 - and occasionally it has moments that are insightful, almost sweet. Bella is likeably indie, if annoying in many other ways. Anyway, there are still a few hundred pages to go, and it could certainly go downhill. It lacks subtlety, and steals many basic plot elements from 'True Blood'. And this is meant to be the best of the series, which is concerning. But I've certainly read worse - I've read bestselling adult books which are worse. And I can see why many a teenage girl relates to Bella, even if she is a weak role model).

Oh my goodness, the above paragraph is a mess. But I cannot be bothered to sort it out.
Quick bullet point of the rest of 'news':

*The ball was great. Lots of free food (from doughnuts and chocolate fountain, to meatballs in sauce, chips and pastries), an open bar, magicians and acrobats, bands of many genres, an awesome silent disco, and the decorations were amazing. They'd really captured the Christmas Carol spirit.

* I did manage to get to the library and read some dissertaton-related stuff, round the Twilight afternoon, packing etc. The train ride home was as gorgeous as ever. The East coast is beautiful all year round, but magical in the winter.

*I've failed to do anything productive so far since getting home. I've been on Beatles Rock Band, made a Youtube vid, been taken out for a lovely lunch by the parents, watched too much trashy TV, enjoyed Mum's homecooking, done most of my Christmas shopping on Amazon . . . and that's about it :-s This needs to change starting tomorrow.

Laters x

Hello much-neglected blog . . .

Wow, so I only posted three times last month. Which is a shame, because it was a pretty amazing month in a lot of ways. Not that I remember much about it specifically.
There were lots of trips to London to research my dissertation, a good few films watched at the film society. After seeing the 'State of Play' Russell Crowe/ Ben Affleck movie, which I actually enjoyed, I saw the original BBC tv series, which I absoloutely LOVED.
I've become slightly addicted (to my embarrassment) to 'I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!', mainly because I'm a fan of Colin and Justin, the slightly hysterical interior designers, and it is a fairly interesting look at a fairly nice bunch of people whose agents think they should pimp themselves out for public 'entertainment'. The body language is fascinating, and I love trying to work out how much is real, and what the editors want. Oh, I'll stop trying to justify myself. I just like Colin and Justin.

Oh, and there was nanowrimo. Oh, nanowrimo. I ended up writing almost half the novel in the last three days, which is an absolutely crazy thing thing to do, and it made my fingernail bleed :-s typing related injury! I'd written this carefully laid-out plan on the first day, and then the story went off somewhere completely different after the first chapter. The story within a story, the episode transcripts of the cancelled show that the three friends were obsessed with as children, ended up taking up nearly half the story, and being far more interesting than the main plot, which was certainly not the intention. It's very hastily written, disjointed, and feels rushed in some places and stretched in others, but it's over 50,000 words long (just), has a beginning, middle and end, and vaguely makes sense. So I'm proud of it. There's a good story lying hidden in there somewhere. I'll defintely be doing nanowrimo again, though I'll try and keep my wordcount a little more regular next time!

Oh, and my choir did our Christmas concert on Monday, and it was amazing :D I love my choir, and it's a lot of fun, but seeing as we don't have much time to rehearse, and are totally non-audition, so learn everything by ear, we're perhaps not always the most tunefully accomplished in our final performance :) And the audience is usually quite small, friends and family and former choir members, but we don't mind and have a good time anyway. This time we sounded great, really great, and the audience was big, and I'm still trying to work out what was different. We went for simpler songs than usual perhaps - our harmonies always sound better on simple acapella songs. And we held the concert in a church, instead of the usual music theatre, so I think a lot of the congregation had come along. Which was great -lots of different age ranges and not just students. Anyway, it was an evening that will stay with me for a long time, and we were all so happy and hyper afterwards - awesome. And one of my best friends sang an absolutely beautiful, spine-tingling solo in 'I don't want a lot for Christmas' - she is going to be a star one day I'm sure :)

Oh, and whilst I was nanowriming my younger brother was Hometaping - writing and recording over 20minutes of music in a month. The final product, an EP called 'Take Me Home' is free to download here: http://www.tinyurl.com/TakeMeHomeEP

It is an amazing achievement for month, and a great record in general - Ive listened to it a good few times already, and parts of it blow me away.

Oh, and I bought a really great dress today for the ball on Friday :) Yey!

Ok, I will blog more regularly this month :)

Hand rashes and tea

Hello world!
(Cue Pogabat's music - da da DA da da DA da da DA Daaaaa!)

I couldn't think of what to call this post, but I am drinking tea, and I do have a rash on my hand at the mo. I'm not sure what's caused it, but it seems to only flare up mid-way through each university term, and then disappear a week after I get home. I've thought many things - the cold, a lack of vitamins, stress? Current thinking is that I'm allergic to some cleaning product they use here, so I've been trying to keep out of my room all day on the day it's cleaned, but this doesn't seem to be having much affect . . .

When did I last write? I should have checked that before starting to write this . . .oh, November 5th methinks? What have I done since then?

* I went to the British Film Institute Library. It cost me a small fortune to get there, and I got lost and walked round in circles until my feet ached, and got very wet on the way back because my boots leak . . .but it was AMAZING. Just unbelievably cool. And SO useful for my dissertation. Yey :) I'm going back there tomorrow.

* I saw one of the best-reviewed plays at the local theatre this term. It was beautifully put together, and the little dancing scenes beween each act were stunning, but it was weird and dark and depressing, and not as good as the other shows I've seen in the last few weeks.

* I saw Star Trek at film society. I love that film so much. It feels like a classic already. It ticks the sci-fi, drama, romance, adventure and breath-taking special effects boxes. And it makes me cry in the first five minutes. Not many films can say that.

* I got a ticket to the Snow Ball! Hopefully.

* I gave up on Flashfoward, then decided I hadn't . . . I can't work out whether the screenwriters are being very clever, or have written themselves into a complete hole. The dialogue is terrible, and I really don't care about any of the characters, despite the great cast. It certainly isn't Lost. Hype gets you nowhere.

* I had no lecture today, and was going to do lots of work to make up for it, but totally failed to do so. And as I typed that last sentence, I realised that I have a French class in an hour and a half, and I still havn't started the translation. Oooops. Better do that now.

It's Rememberance Day here in the UK. I'm not sure if it is elsewhere in the world too? Anyway, this day always makes me think of World War I poetry. And today I thought of this poem by Wilfred Owen.

Peace out.

Fireworks

Oooooooooh aaaaaaaaaah.
That was the text that a friend just sent me. I was all 'If you're trying to be a ghost, you've missed it by a few days', and he was all 'I was doing an impression of me and the kids watching the fireworks, silly.' Which made me laugh.

And I've just typed that and realised that most non-British people probably don't celebrate November 5th, right? I've never really thought about it before. Feel free to let me know if you have Bonfire Night wherever you are, and if not if you've even heard of it. Because this is probably bigger than Halloween over here. Less merchandise, but I think we're probably about 10times to head out to see the bonfire and fireworks on Nov5th than dress up and go to a Halloween party.

The origins are all a bit morbid really - several hundred years ago a Catholic plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament was foiled. So we celebrate that they're still standing and all go and watch fireworks (gunpowder, see?), have a huge bonfire, and occasionally burn a paper Guy (Guy Fawkes being the poor fella who is historically landed with all the blame, despite not really being the brains of the outfit), although you see that less and less these days - sometimes paper celebrities are burnt instead. Anyway, I guarantee you that over half of the nation don't have a clue about the origins of the festivities, and most of the other half know less than what I just put there. So it's not remotely political (in fact the idea of celebrating the Houses of Parliament is faintly hilarious in the current political climate), or religious or anti-religious. It's just a chance to watch the local council spend a few thousand pounds on brightly coloured moments, get warm by a big fire, often go on a fairground (my university town turns Nov5th into a HUGE deal, the whole town turns up. The fireworks were incredible, and the fairground was verging on a themepark, not that I went on anything). And eat toffee apples, candyfloss, treacle toffee and parrkin. Not that I ate any of that either - I got too into Halloween to rememer Bonfire Night properly this year. But I went with good company, and we watched the fireworks from a great spot. Very pretty

I'm hopefully off to London tomorrow to go to a film museum and research for my dissertation. I find london exciting, but terrifying too - fingers crossed I don't get very lost.

Nanowrimo word count: 3153 :-s

Witches and words

This blog comes to you in three parts. All will be hastily written, as it is 00.43, and I need to be up early in the mornng

Part 1: Halloween. Halloween was brilliant. It was misty, someone was playing sinister music on the organ in the unlit chapel, some wonderful person had put two pumpkin lanterns either side of the top floor window of the staff office building. My little Austrian friend and I went shopping for sugary goodies, bought far too much, and headed down several long, dark roads to a big old accomodation block, telling scary stories along the way. We then watched 'Dracula', ate too much chocolate, and got slightly hysterical over the Austrian's hilarious running commentary on the Freudian nature of the film, and the outrageous depiction of women, whilst another friend insisted that the movie was merely a tourist information film about her own country, and that she frequently crawled down walls to go to the shops in the morning. On the way back we encountered many a zombiefied student. And I sat in my window seat watching 'Donnie Darko' until 3.30am in the morning. Perfect.

Part 2: NaNoWriMo. Yes, because I am mad, and many an internet person is doing it, I have decided to attempt to write a novel in a month. Yes, that is 50,000 words whilst trying to write a dissertation. The hope is that after that this the 15,000 word dissertation will feel like nothing. And that filling my day up with more things will make my life feel more structured . . . . ? Well, I'm already two days behind, and all I have is a rough plot outline. But I think a challenge would be good for me. For anyone who is interested, my profile is here: http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/584654
Nothing posted on it so far, but there will be tomorrow.

Part 3: Selwyn Snowball. Tickets go on sale on Friday, and I am hopefully going :) Yey.

Now to sleep.

Showers

Hmmm . . . the problem with being on a corridor with ten third-years who actually go to lectures, and a lovely but enthusiastic cleaner who turns up early in the morning, and not having any lectures yourself until 11am, is that it gets to 10am and you're still thinking 'I could really do with a shower', and you don't do anything about it because the one time you headed for the bathroom today the showers were both taken. And now they're probably being cleaned. Hmmmm.

Yesterday was a strange day. Spent far too long texting a friend about matters I won't get into, safe to say that we're back to where we started, which is good, but does seem a bit of an odd use of two hours and 90+ texts. Thank goodness for the unlimited text package.

Woot, I'm listening to the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind soundtrack. Must be one of the most beautiful and varied OSTs ever. Smiles :)

So, I spent over an hour,and about five journal pages, noting down every image that appears in the first four minutes of Oliver Stone's JFK. There's probably an average of an image every second, perhaps more, in there, so it took a LONG TIME . . . bizzarely interesting though. Not sure how much use it'll be to the dissertation (the Kennedy images don't really start until the last 20seconds of the montage), but once I'd started it was very difficult to stop.

Choir social tonight, which is going to be a formal at Clare's College - a 'formal' basically being a formal meal colleges have here, some once a week (like mine), others every day (like my cousin's). And everyone dresses up in suits/dresses, and wears robes if your college has them (mine doesn't) and has a three-course meal, and often (unfortunately) drinks a crazy amount of wine. Although they've done a lot this year to make people cut back on that. And our choir is full of people who are careful about their drink, so yey, should be a great evening :)

Right, I need a shower.

One of those days

Has been one of those crazy days where I ran around doing lots of stuff not related to my degree, but still important and time-consuming. Most of it got done. But I'm really tired, and should have been in bed ages ago, only I was trying to see if my phone would work- it was receiving texts, but not able to send them or make calls, or even receive calls, despite claiming to have full signal . . . hmmmm. Seems to be ok now, I tested it on Any Question Answered because it was too late to risk waking anyone up - and they replied, even if they screwed up my answer. I asked for reccomendations of atmospheric, indie, non-scary Halloween movies,and they sent me a list that included Psycho, Halloween and Nightmare on Elm Street. I was thinking more along the lines of Donnie Darko . . . oh well. At least the text went through.

Random info of the day:
1.The only place in this town which has the 2006 movie 'Amazing Grace' which I need for a church group tomorrow is the English Faculty library, which I can't borrow items from. Time to call in a favour.
2. 'True Blood' is very . . . . weird. Not sure what I think of it yet.
3. Postage is cheaper than you might think.
4. Phones always break when you need them the most.
5. I'd really like to get fit and start eating more healthily, but not sure how that would fit into my uni lifestyle at the moment. . . I walk a lot, but it would be good to try some other forms of exercise.
6. My younger brother and sister turn 14 in a few hours. I wonder what I'd say to my 14 year old self? Everything seemed so intense then. It was a really influential year, in a whole variety of ways. Just hang on in there I guess.

And now I really do need to sleep.

Internet spoilers

So today I didn't do much apart from watch Dollhouse. Well, I still did a translation, attended a lecture, a French class, was visited by a good friend I hadn't seen in ages, and hung out with my Austrian friend to eat fruit and watch the new BBC 'Emma', but otherwise I watched Dollhouse. Six episodes of it. Which I'm a little embarassed to admit, because I had a good half a dozen other things I should have been doing (mainly Kennedy related stuff, but also reviewing Watchmen), but this show is soooooo addictive.

I really wasn't expecting it to be that great, I'd heard pretty mixed things about it - the reports of extensive re-filming, and whispers that it was the first real Whedon screw-up. But I absolutely love it. I mean, it's far from perfect - the refilming and filler material is obvious in the first few episodes, and whilst I know that it's a show partly about the objectification (if that's a real word) of women, I wish they didn't have to be show quite so many lingering shots of female body . . . but it's the type of series that feels like it knows where it's going. It manages to slowly unravel the story, little by little giving us glimpses until it all starts to add up, without crawling to a pace that insults viewers' intelligence (like Flashforward), or careering around mulitple red-herrings (like Lost). Whedon is a man with a game plan. Sadly, he's a man with such a need for closure that he filmed a future-set finale for the DVD, in the belief that the series was going to be cancelled . . . and then they renewed it. I havn't got to the end of the series yet, and I probably won't get to see the second series currently airing in America for months, but it will be very interesting to see how he will continue a show that has kind of already ended - whether he will see this as only a possible future, something for the second series to work towards, or ignore it completely.

Anyway, what I logged on to say is that this is the first series in years that I havn't looked up spoilers for. I have a terrible habit of reading through tv series on wikipedia, even if I know that I plan to watch them, or even as I'm sitting in front of the tv watching them . . . I don't know what that says about me. Impatient, doesn't like scary suprises, likes to know what's going on in the media world. Yes, yes and yes. And I know that part of the reason that I've managed to avoid spoilers for this series is that I'm watching it over a few days, rather than a few weeks. Thank goodness for dvd boxsets. I havn't been able to geniunally enjoy the twists and turns of a series for so long. But it's also refreshing to find something so slow-burning and well-written that you don't want to know what happens next until the writer chooses to show you, you just want to go with the flow - I felt the same about Mad Men. I fear that the next series of Dollhouse can't live up to this, second series are always a danger-game, especially if the writer wasn't expecting to write them, had brought things to a close, and then has to re-open Pandora's jigsaw box and start re-arranging the pieces into something meaningful. But for now it is food for thought, one of those morally puzzling shows that leaves you asking questions in your sleep, and I'm really enjoying it. Oh, and that FBI dude is HOT :)

So dream job at the moment? Television script writer. Though most of them seem to have very little creative independence, respect, pay or job security . . . . so let's change that to Joss Whedon. When I grow up I would like to be Joss Whedon. There you go Mum.

I really don't blog enough

I'd totally intended to keep this blogging everyday thing up, but I always forget about it until it's late and I'm really tired. . . hmm, so what's been happening in my life recently?
Had choir rehearsal tonight, and there are about 40 freshers, which has pretty much tripled us from the number we were often dwindling to last term . . . it's exciting, we're all hoping they stay.
Church has also seen a big increase in new students, and we're doing lots more socially stuff, which is great.
I'm still seeing my Austrian friend most days, whether it's for a cup of tea in the evening, or lunch in hall - it's nice to have someone who you can keep in daily contact with like that in a busy place like this.
I havn't done enough work, and I'm seeing my supervisor tomorrow, which is a bit nerve-racking.
On Thursday there's a presentation for the Japan JET scheme that I'm thinking of doing after uni - hopefully it'll clear up some of the questions that I have about it.
I've started the first series of TrueBlood and Dollhouse in the last couple of days thanks to my cousin . . . and I'm still watching Flashforward. And I'm soon to start on MadMen series2. Too much addictive American TV around at the moment :)
I still havn't got round to finishing Watchmen . . . but I hope to do so and book review it soon.
My bedroom is flippin freezing this evening.
I've still only caught up with about half the people I wanted to/should catch up with since the summer.
My two gorgeous new Threadless t-shirts arrived today :) They're very geeky, but in a pretty way-I love them already.
And I need to sleep, because I need to cram some work in the morning.
Night all x

Thoughts

Thoughts whilst in a lecture on cultural history:

1.This lecturer bears an uncanny resemblance to Youtube's Mickeleh. Ok, Mickeleh a decade or so ago. And with a different accent. But still, otherwise they could be twins.
2. Why is this lecturer wearing a tracksuit? Lecturers don't usually wear casual clothes . . .
3. How did I end up sitting behind my good friend C? It's lovely to see her, but what are the chances of me happening to choose that one seat directly behind her one seat for two weeks running, when there are 400 seats in the room?
4. Ummm, why do the doors at the back of the hall keep opening themselves? Is someone listening to the lecture from the wrong side of the hall? Wow, but three doors just opened all a once . . .and now the lecturer is spooked. He may cover it up with laughing, but he's now trying to give the lecture from part-way up the stairs . . .

Thoughts whilst watching 'The Brief Encounter' at film society:
1.Wow, weird accents.
2. I'm glad everyone else agrees. The people in the row in front of me can't stop laughing at all the wrong places . . . and now they're getting slightly hysterical. And it must be infectious, because everyone is biting their lips and sniggering.
3. Oh, and I do feel bad, because this film is gorgeous and sad, and a real classic. But I can't stop laughing.

Thoughts on discovering the 'balloonboy' frenzy that gripped the world(especially when it turned out that he had been at home all along):
1. My goodness, this says a lot about modern society/news coverage/global culture etc etc etc. Perhaps I should vlog about this. Hmmmmm . . .

Uni days are here again

So, I'm back at uni. I've been here since Saturday evening. The leaving and travelling only involved a fraction of the usual emotional breakdown . . . even when I'm looking forward to going back (which I was, at least partly, this time) I find it difficult to say goodbye to my mum. And the packing was only completed ten minutes after we were meant to be leaving . . . and I later found that I'd left a box behind. A box with all my dvds in it. It also had a few other notable things, such as a couple of folders, my cheque books and passport, but it was the dvd loss which was distressing.

Anyhow, I slightly digress. Being back is it's usual mixture of pros and cons. My room is massive, faces out onto an amazing street, has a window seat, and is actually warm. However, it's also right at the top of the building, up several flights of stairs, and there is no lift. So I'm gonna be fit by the end of term.

I've had chance to catch up with a few very wonderful people who I missed a lot over the summer. And I'm meeting with some more over the next few days. However, I only know a few of the people on my corridor, and there's always going to be elements of the uni halls experience that are a little lonely compared to being in a house with a rather loud family.

I've brought my guitar with me this term, which is already providing much needed creative distraction. But I'm not sure if it makes up for the awkwardness of the unisex bathroom with it's two shower cubicles and two toilet cubicles in a rather . . . echoey space, and where the chances of you meeting a someone for the first time after they exit the toilet are rather high :-s

The pre-lecture days are fun but I always find working at the Freshers Fair a bit stressful.
And the course this year looks great. But I should have read more over the summer . . .

So that's my up and down life a the moment.

In other news, I'm enjoying Flasforward, but think comparisons to Lost are unwarranted and unfair. It's a very different show - far more slow-burning, and more fiddly. Wish they'd take a few lessons from Lost and not see the need to over-explain every twist in flashback, it gets a bit insulting. And it's yet to do one of the complete rug-puller moments that Lost is well-known for, but the first time Lost truly did that was the fourth episode of the first series, so we have time yet. But Flashforward does have these little moments and scenes which work so well - the opening to the second episode for example with the children lying on the ground. Actually, any blackout lie-down moment. There's something very spooky about seeing large quantities of people 'asleep' like that. I wonder if they got the idea from that lying down game?

Oh, and the Ozark Cousins are wonderful. Really unique sound, totally different to DPC. Is there anything that Craig Benzine can't do? That man is my hero.

Time flies

I just got an email from Mercy, my Zambian housemate - she was both my housemate in Zambia, and actually Zambian, which was a little rare for the school where I was working - most of the Zambian staff were married and lived with their families, most of the young, single staff were European and American volunteers.

Mercy is amazing, and meeting her was probably the best part of the whole six months. Because of visa complications, I was the only gap year student there (the others arrived four months later), so despite being a few years older than me she immediately became my closest friend on the site. When the other gappies arrived they were placed in a house together, so I think their experience was probably very different - Mercy showed me Zambian culture from the inside, made me Zambian food every day, tried to teach me some of her language, let me see the Western world from her point of view, and even took me back to her family's home in the capital to spend Christmas there. I miss her very much.

Anyway, this email made me feel very old. How is it three years since I first met her? I guess a lot has happened since then, though I don't always feel like it. She had just got engaged when I met her, got married shortly ater I left, and now her baby daughter is walking! Really hope I can meet her little girl one day. Plus she was emailing to wish me a happy 22nd birthday, which is on Friday. For some reason 22 seems like the first age to be 'properly adult', 21 almost seems like the learner year of adulthood, and 22 is the real thing.

And I still don't have a clue what I want to do with my future. If I want to do at masters at my uni I need to decide in the next two weeks. If I want to go to Japan I have about a month to make up my mind. If I want to do in a masters in Glasgow whilst living at home, I probably have about two months decision time. Why do they all want me to decide on my life plan a few weeks into my final year? The more they try and rush me the more I procrastinate :-s

I should blog earlier

So I can do early videos . . . occasionally. Early waking is a bit hit-and-miss, more like every other day at the moment. Perhaps I should write my blog earlier in the day too. That way I wouldn't have reached the falling-asleep-on-the-keyboard stage by the time I'm wanting to do my previously-nightly update. At the moment it's 20.18 and I'm at least capable of writing in comprehensible sentences. ish.

So, this week hasn't been very interesting so far. Some more Kennedy-related stuff has been viewed. I finally finished that 'Dark Side of Camelot' book. The built-in cupboard has been cleared, only to be filled again because I have nowhere else to put my uni things. My bedroom is beginning to resemble the trenches of 1914 - there are now so many boxes that I can barely make it from my bed to the door. Strictly Come Dancing fever has replaced Derren Brown fever, and evenings are spent watching the rumba rehearsals on 'It Takes Two', instead of slowed down footage of a dapper illusionist. Not that DB is entirely out of favour, despite failing to stick me and the sister to the sofa, but Strictly never fails to become at least an incy bit addictive . . . even when old favourites are replaced, the celebs are unheard of, and a certain presenter really needs to retire Oh BBC, you do make me worry. Attempts to please everyone at once always lead to an inability to please anyone at all.

I'm re-reading John Green's 'Paper Towns'. Another book that I'd forgotten how much I like. For some reason it's put me in a nostalgic mood all day, despite being about as far removed from my own life experiences as you can imagine. A strangely beautiful book anyways.

The long day

So today was several hours longer than most other days. As in I set my alarm for 7am, rolled out of bed at 7.15, and was breakfasting and videoing by 7.45. So stuff actually got done today. Woop. A hundred pages of course-related book, three hours of course-related dvd.
The room didn't get any more packed this weekend. But this early-bird lark could majorly help with that this week.

Hmmm . . . currently watching a CSI Vegas episode I've never seen before. That, for me, is pretty rare. I don't think I could have possibly all 200+ episodes, I think channel5 must just show the same forty or so again and again . . .

Goodness, waking up early leaves you tired *yaaaaaaawn* I'll probably head to bed once I've found out whodunnit. Me, in bed before 1am??? The bodyclock must be adjusting already.

The early bird catches the worm

Not that I have any flying abilities to speak of, or have any desire to catch worms. But I've had this crazy, Wheezy Waiter inspired plan to get up at 7am this week, eat a decent breakfast for once, sometimes video, and generally find that there are more hours in the day. It will be a minor miracle if this works out, especially as it is currently 1.42 am and I am still online. Which is perfectly normal for me, but not ideal if I am planning on being awake again in just over five hours time.

This is a necessary endeavour though, especially as the uni term is fast approaching, and I still have a lot to do. Today was generally spent procrastinating . . . all I can tell you of interest about today is that videos are more quickly made when someone else is in the room, and that Strictly Come Dancing isn't that great so far, but Chris Hollins is better than expected. So there you go.

Now to grab however many winks can be had in five hours.

My mum is a search-engine whizzkid

Ignore the majority of the previous post. My mum managed to find the film to view online within ten minutes of switching on her computer :-s And my mum doesn't even understand the internet :) Well, I am officially an idiot, and my mum is wonderful. Especially as she saved me a whole load of money. I watched the movie as soon as she found it - I had this paranoia that someone would remove it before I got the chance . . .it's pretty good as these movies go. The men are handsome, the music is dramatic, it has a few comedic touches, and the battles, whilst going on a bit, look realistic. The whole thing bares little resemblance to what actually happened, but that would be asking too much :)

For the rest of the time today i packed my room. Hurrah. It looks messier than it has done in years right now.

Last night I had a very strange dream where my middle-aged, strict former English teacher married Peter Serafinowicz, and they were moving in with us . . . and I spent more time distressed that I would have to give up my room, than taking the time to question this incredibly weird pairing. Wonder what on earth sparked that craziness?
I did watch a fair bit of Serafinowicz tonight on YT as a result. The diet plan and kitchen gun sketches remain some of the funniest inventions of British comedy :)

Right, to sleep, and hopefully will conquer the rest of that Kennedy book tomorrow. Or within next couple of days anway.
Ooooooh, Derren Brown is trying to stick us to our sofas tomorrow night. Literally :D

Kennedy related despair

I was halfway through a vaguely ok blog post when the blogger made the window disappear. I hate it when it does that.

I'm too tired to type it all out again :-s To sum it up, I've spent most of the evening looking for some way of watching PT109 without having to pay £50 for the one and only video of it on Amazon. No video of it on Youtube or other such sites, no dvd release, seemingly no other VHS that isn't American region, and only one place to download it from (and though I don't fully understand the legal and virus implications, I'm too paranoid to go for that option). I'm still not full convinced that the £50 copy is UK region. It better be.

The original post attempted to be far more more insightful than that. Ponderings on how unusual it is to find anything that can't be bought or viewed with the click of a button these days. But the silly blogger ate that version, and now I must sleep. Zzzzzzzzz.

Finish it

I just watched The Fountain, showing for the first time on British digital tv. The day and the hour that they chose to show this film reflects that it was a bit of a flop - it cost a lot to make, the actors and director involved generated a lot of hype, and then the majority of the reviews were average to negative. Not all of them. This was one of the rare occasions where film critics were really divided - a few thought it was a brave attempt at something different, or that it was well directed. The dude from the Radio Times gave it five stars, which is why I gave it a go tonight, but he's made a career of saying the complete opposite to everyone else. It was genuinally seen as a misguided, flawed and overambitious mess. Crucially, the words 'pretentious' and 'self-indulgent' were used in early reviews, and appearing snobby is one thing that many reviewers of today fall over themselves to avoid, so it was beaten into box office oblivion, almost as if they were afraid of it.

I suppose I'm saying this to remind myself that I shouldn't always go along with what the critics say. I'm far too easily influenced by what is fashionable with my favourite writers, whether it be in book and film taste, or in political views. Often I bluff my way through life trying to sound far more intelligent and well-read than I really am by copying the opinions of people I think are more clever (or, to my shame, more popular) than me.

So, The Fountain is a great film. Yes, it is very different, it is more like three movies in one, with the relationship between the three parts not clear cut (present, future and story? But more than that, as they bleed into each other at unexpected moments). But it's not pretentious, or over-ambitious. If anything the unusual struture if one of the clearest ways of capturing experiences such as grief, the moments before death, and love, where a linear tale doesn't seem sufficient. I can't remember who said it, but it's true that our minds don't work that way, they're constantly flicking back and forth - present, past, a dozen different daydreams, stories and possibilities. Why should books and films be any different? Why must movies be expected to 'make sense', with a beginning, a middle, and an end that nicely ties everything up? Life rarely works in that way. Rachel Weisz and Hugh Jackman were really, really good, and it was visually stunning. Sometimes I don't understand critics.

Devil horns and beard stroking

Yes, my parents have got so sick/irritated/worried by all the Derren Brown talk that I have been reduced to communicating with my brother about the show in Ruth's Sign Language. Let's get it out of the way - DB is a fiendish, deceitful, devilish man, but his show was as entertaining as ever. It has been very amusing to see how many tweeters actually think he did predict the lottery by using 'the wisdom of crowds' - getting 23 'random' (ie. gullible) people to 'free write' (?) numbers, which got sorted into predictions by Tyler (the American plant?), and later by Derren himself, which were then added up, divided by the number of people, into an averaged-out, 'collective prediction'. We never saw any of the volunteers' predictions, and though the whole hour long show tonight contained little examples of how fantastic DB is at influencing people, none of this had anything to do with influencing a lottery machine. It was an hour long case of misdirection. The little tale at the end of how he could have fixed the lottery (involving inside people at the BBC, hypnotising the guards - cue silly hypnotist face - and replacing some of the balls with specially made ones 20grams heavier) was amusing, especially the number of times he stressed how he had NOT done it that way :) How I wish he had. But no, it was most likely the split screen or the specially made, ridiculously expensive LED screen balls. Alternatively, for those who insist that he would not use flashy techno, a false wall hiding an assistant, or a truly awesome case of sleight-of-hand.
For all the deception, he is a fantastic entertainer, who really does get everyone talking. Top of the twitter trending topics for 15minutes or so after the show.
Woot, he's using some weird subliminal film to literally stick the viewing public to their sofas next week. That should be fun.

In other news . . . I went to the dentist today. Yey. No real problems, some cleaning scheduled for December, and apparently I still have a milk tooth left . . . which is strane. And a little worrying if I end up with a massive gap in my teeth in a few years time . . hmmm. Kings of Leon was playing at the dentist's, thought that was pretty cool. Oh, and what is with them getting two old singles back into the charts all of a sudden? They're not touring here at the moment as far as I know.
I failed to vlog as I mis-timed my whole day, and then ended up downstairs looking after the dog . . . I have new-found respect for the VEDS.
Trying to decide if I can really bothered watching all of 'Harper's Island', this silly murder-mystery slasher show BBC3 have imported from America, or whether I should just look up the ending on wikipedia. Decisions, decisions . . .
Watching the first ever episode of Family Guy at the moment. Paul collected all the box sets a while back, but we eventually lost interest. It's funny how different they all looked back then, and how much tamer it is. Brian is still strangely attractive. For a cartoon dog.

Boxes

I spent a large part of my day packing things into boxes. Oh the joy. Actually, a lot of the time was spent taking files and ringbinders out of boxes, taking sheets out of plastic wallets, removing staples, and putting most of a good five years of exam work in a box to be recycled. It was a strange afternoon. It's funny to think how difficult so much of that schoolwork seemed at the time, and how pleased I was with a lot of my writing then. When I read it back it seemed so easy, clumsily phrased and, above all, kind of pointless. So much of it was things I never really understood in the first place, but have never used since. Mum is the type of person who believes that all GCSE and A-level work should be saved 'just in case' (because clearly I might need a diagram of the the water cycle for my History degree), but even she agrees that most of my unnecessary belongings need to disappear, so most things were thrown. Including all the A-level History, which really isn't relevant to anything I'm studying at uni. I kept a few vocabulary books, because you never know when you might need to speak some French (or Latin . . .), a couple of my best junior projects, for sentimental reasons, and (perhaps tellingly) virtually everything related to English Literature.
Yes, I did read all the essays marked by a certain sixth-form English teacher, and his comments still make me very happy, because they make me believe that I can write. Yes, however much I've improved at History in the past year, I do sometimes still wish that I'd taken the English degree. Especially now that there are no jobs anywhere anyway, so it hardly matters which is the more employable. I wonder when I'll stop thinking that way?

What else happened today? I listened to a lot of DFTBA music - one of the benefits of having a music-mad brother with a fair bit of extra cash. The Driftless Pony Club EP is fantastic. I vlogged about 'The Beach'.

Oh, and I thought a lot about Derren Brown's stunt. Either a split-screen with old feed taking up the left side, whilst somebody writes the numbers on the balls, or the white balls having special LED screens, either transmitting from the board he writes the announced numbers on, or keyed in by someone at the back. And that's my final answer. He'll try and convince us differently on Friday night - he'll come up with some complicated formula, and then sit back and smile when the nation tries to use it for next week's Lottery - but his phoney 'solutions' are all part of the illusion. Admire him from afar, but don't believe a word he says.

Numbers

So it's 09/09/09, and Derren Brown just correctly predicted the Lottery. Yes, I know it's a trick, and it's unlikely that he really did 'predict' it earlier in the day like he claimed . . . but then again . . . He'd written it on plastic balls, admittedly facing away from us until after the official BBC announcement, but he had them in full view of the camera for the whole show. There didn't seem like any opportunity for sleight of hand. He was chattering away for about five minutes or so, and there is no way that BBC has that kind of delay on the Lottery show, even if it wasn't live to the second like he claimed. If there was some form of delay, then the BBC would be first to call him a fake, as they're a rival channel. He seemed genuinely terrified that it might not work - he looked physically sick at one point. There was nobody, apart from the cameraman, in the room - no smoke, no mirrors, no cutaway.
And yes, aspects look suspicious. The apparent claim that Channel4 wouldn't let him buy a lottery ticket, in case people claimed he had unfairly led to a loss in their winnings - well, I suppose that is something they would do,but it would have made the trick a hundred times more impressive if he'd had that winning lottery ticket in his hand. And not being able to show his numbers until after the BBC had chosen the balls? Well, I suppose there may be a legal rule about who annonces the Lottery, but if he was actually making some form of educated guess I doubt they would sue him for it . . . it would have helped the BBC show ratings no end.
And then there is the usually taken for granted 'fact' that the Lottery cannot be predicted. Otherwise, surely, someone would have done so already? Yes, Derren may be a very clever man, with an incredible brain capable of learning huge quantities of information, and he may well have spent the whole of the past year working out some giant mathmatical formula of probability, but to get every number correct on live tv?
So what to think? I've recently become a little suspicious that Derren's 'explanations' are just as much as part of the trick as the stunt itself, so I will almost guarantee that whatever he says on Friday won't be the whole truth, and might not be the truth at all. Sometimes when he gives one of his 'here's how I did it', where he claims to have used some subliminal sign, or pattern of speech, or to have learnt some seemingly impossibly large quantity of information, I can't help but wonder if it was, at least in part, a far simpler use of traditional 'magic', or at least a good dose of hypnosis. This obviously isn't the case for all of his tricks, some can't be explained without his famous 'power of suggestion', but I do think he makes things seem a little more complicated than they are, and that is why we marvel at him. He is a true original, and one of the greatest showmen in history, even if we can't always trust him.
My theory? He'll claim that it's due to some formula, and 95% of me will be desperate to believe him. He's very difficult to dislike, or to believe capable of staightforward deception, for all his mystery. But there will still be a part of me that will believe it was a different type of trick, some form of projection or inner-writing mechanism on the plastic for example, or even a frozen split-screen like someone on YT just suggested, that meant the numbers could be added seconds after the BBC anouncement. I think part of the thrill for him is making us believe that he is capable of mental feats that seem almost impossible.
Here's the link, I don't know how long Youtube will keep this footage up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QG-5qebwflA

In other news, I ordered two $9 Threadless t-shirts today, which made me very happy :) And the JFK stuff is already pretty interesting.

And I'm back :)

So, the weekend was great. And also slightly surreal, and more than a little bit exhausting, but mainly great. I caught the coach on Thursday morning, spent five cramped hours wondering why I'd downloaded such naf music to my phone, re-reading the same three chapters of a scandalous JFK book and the entire reviews section of Empire magazine, before pulling into Manchester in the late afternoon. My crazy, inspirational and very funny friend SA drove me to her mum's new flat, where I ate waaaaay too much food (SA has recently started learning how to cook) and stayed up until almost 5am watching movies - Benjamin Button ( beautiful, and even better than the reviews claimed), Slumdog Millionaire (a really great film, but perhaps did not quite live up to the hype), and Single White Female (scary, but in a creepy, psycological way. A bit of a classic).
Friday I hung round town and bought second-hand books whilst my friend went to her cleaning job. Then we went off to Chester and saw SH, another of my best friends, who I write to almost every week but havn't seen for a couple of years. We got very, very lost though - silly Satnav. SA's new flat (which we went to see - it's a room in an almost mansion belonging to an old couple, very atmospheric) is very near SH, so it was great they got to know each other a bit better. And SH cooked lasagne. Mmmmm. We sang along to Oasis on the way home.
I was dropped off at SM's, and we met her boyfriend (who is also a film geek, so movie conversation was had into the wee hours). SM had a skating exam on the Saturday, so I met up with BY (a sixth-form friend who was disappearing back to uni before the Sunday meet-up), and we talked in a coffee shop for three hours about career options, and friendship and technology of the future :) One of those all-encompassing conversations. And this probably got her car clamped because she had only bought a short-stay ticket . . . . I explored the shops, quite a few had changed. A very happy hour was spent in Toys 'R US (kids toys are so great these days! A lot more Star Trek, Harry Potter, Doctor Who and Indiana Jones, and far fewer Barbies :D) Then had tea (or frappucinos as the case might be) with JE and CE from my old church - again probably hadn't seen them for a couple of years. Same old college and job thoughts catch-up, but they're also helping to run the youth group at church, and it was great to hear how lots of new stuff is happening. Dinner was at the chinese buffet place with JN, hadn't seen her since sixth-form, so I was a little nervous as to how we'd cover so much ground . . . but it was good, and she seems very happy.
Then more films with SA - The Perfect Getaway (so, so much better than the trailer suggested, even if we guessed what was going to happen twenty minute in, it was still brilliantly done), and The Ugly Truth(which really shouldnt have been as funny as it was, considering it probably put the feminist movement back several years).
Sunday was breakfast with SM, a meet-up with five of the college gang - coffee and Pizza Hut, much talk and general noise :) And WB was there! I hadn't seen him since my 18th. I went for tea at Wetherspoons with MD and JS (two of my favourite people in the world) and then saw District 9 with MD. Wow, I love that film. Different to what the hype suggests, a lot more bleak, but brilliant. Thought-provoking. And the lead actor as INCREDIBLE, especially seeing as this was his first ever acting role - think he's usually a props guy!
And Monday was coffee with DE, and then home. Five hours listening to the Eagles and then reading The Beach - went pretty quickly :)

And that was my weekend. That was probably of little interest to anyone but me, but I wanted to remember it, because don't get to see these guys very often, and this will probably only get worse as we get older :( Though we're hoping to go to Canada next year. But still, sometimes I don't like growing up.

And I'm off . . .

I'm heading to Manchester for a few days :) Hoping to catch up with a lot of people, and chill out. Probably limited internet access whilst I'm away, so I probably won't write until my return.

The weather at the moment . . . . urrrrrrgh :-s

A productive day

Yesterday was not a productive day. Not at all.

Today I shortened and proofread 11 articles, recorded a video and arranged some of the stuff I hoping to do this weekend. So probably the most productive day in the month. And I feel so much better for it.

So they're all emailed in, thank goodness. Over and done with. It's been really interesting, but I can be a really poor self-motivater when I know the deadline is fairly far away. I'm still having flashes of panic about getting names wrong/ writing quality etc, but this is what happens with me and any official work, I get really obsessive. Still, I hope it is ok.

In other news, the hairdryer blew up in my hand today. Flames and smoke and everything. I'm fine,and mum says this is a fairly normal thing to happen, but still. It gave me a bit of a shock. (haha)

Oh, and I woke up at 7.30am today. Wide awake, not a single yawn. Divine intervention? Subconcious stress? Nightime ipod? I dunno, but it was good.

Achievements

Today I:

*Got 6 pieces up to standard for emailing in to work.
* Decided what I will (hopefully) vlog about tomorrow.
* Came up with (yet another) best idea for a novel in the world ever, which (yet again) will probably never work out . . . but for the moment a rough draft of the first few chapters is in my creative writing journal, and I'm feeling pretty pleased with myself :)

I also slept in way too late, and spent too long on the internet. But that's life.

In other news . . . I'm beginning to think that I should keep a dream diary, because my dreams are so vivid, weird and random at the mo . . . usuall in a good way though.

The Wire

I'm sitting in front of the TV, post-work for once, watching The Wire. This is meant to be the greatest show ever made, and this is the first time I've seen any of it :'( Mainly because BBC didn't buy the rights until a year after it had completely finished in America, and then did the craziest piece of scheduling I have ever seen - they showed an episode a night at 11pm five days a week until they finished series 1, then took a week off, then did the same with series 2. And so on. I, like the rest of the nation, had totally intended to watch online on the iPlayer, but they didn't bother telling anyone that they didn't have the rights to show it online until after the first 3 episodes had already aired, making it pretty difficult to catch up, even for those who did have regular access to the TV (which i don't at uni). This is probably the biggest #BBCfail ever in my books. What were they thinking?
One day I'll have enough money to buy the boxsets, and enough time to watch it all. Until then, it is strangely reassuring that there is still some amazing TV out there that I havn't seen yet.

The Chocolate War

So today I read and reviewed The Chocolate War. This was not what I intended to do with my day when I woke up, but I was in the mood for reading something, then I ended up finishing it . . .and I wanted to talk about it, so I turned to the internetz. So it felt like a really productive day, even if I didn't actually do any work. I'm beginning to wonder if this video lark is some strange emotional replacement for the English degree I never took :) Oh well, it'll do me good to have an outlet.

In other news . . . I booked a coach to Manchester for next week :D :D I'll be staying fo 4 days with friends from my sixth form days. I'm excited, I've been really homesick for Manchester recently. If only I was better at managing my work schedule, I'd have been there before now.

Next night, same story

Yes, I am again doing work in front of a Bourne film. This one is better directed and the music is great, but it's the one without a girl in it, and strangely that does take away from the film, as this is one spy franchise that treats its women with respect.
And that's my thought for the evening.

So I should be working . . . .

. . . but instead I'm sitting in front of the tv, watching the Bourne Identity (which is another film I always forget how much I like, until it's some unearthly hour and they're showing it again on ITV2, and I switch over to it half-way through, and get totally drawn into the choreographed fight scenes, Matt Damon's angelic kickass looks, and the rather sweet romance at the centre. And this is the weakest of the 3. Time to raid the dvd shelves), with a pile of information sheets beside me, a Word Document open, and too much sugar cursing through my veins.

Wow

I managed to get two things writen up for work today. As the deadline is fast approaching this is good news. That was pretty much my day. Apart from going to a shop to try and find some wallpaper for the room I'll be sharing with little sis when we move in a couple of months. We campaigned to get plain so that we could draw and paint all over it (or at least she can, being the artistic one), and eventually the parental people agreed. So that'll be fun :)

Oh, and it's John Green birthday. So Happy Birthday to John, and Happy John Green Day to everyone else :)
Oh, and my brother made an amazing song video for John's birthday, and the Vlogbrothers freakin' subscribed to his videos. Oh my gosh. He waaaaay deserves it, he is a massively talented young chappy. But it's still amazing just how quick it's happened to him. Two months after starting, and he's in a collab channel with Dr. Noise and Alan Distro . . . that's kind of wow. I thought me and the sisters would be just an incy bit jealous, but we're all just mega excited for him. None of us can sing or write songs, perhaps if we could we'd feel differently, but right now we're just big fans.
And if you've stumbled across this blog and didn't understand any of the above . . . . you should go on Youtube more often.

And now I need to sleep.

Opticians

Another fairly unproductive day . . . not as unproductive as a lot of my days, but still . . . pretty darn unproductive *sigh*
The trouble is that it feels like I did stuff. Ok, so I set my alarm for 7.30 and then didn't get out of bed until 10.30 (the whole 'trying to find a church to attend when I'm home from uni' goal has really not happened yet). And then I made a vlog book review . . . for pretty much all the rest of the day :-s Ok, so I was talking about one of my all-time favourite books, so I had about 13 minutes footage that I eventually managed to cut down to 7, and editing takes me ages . . but it really shouldn't have taken that long. And it's one of those books that there is so, so much to say . . .I was really sad that I had to cut anything out, but vlogs shouln't be 13minutes long. They probably shouldn't be 7. Oh well.
So the only other thing of note I did today was go to the opticians. That was actually pretty fun. It was a cheapo opticians belonging to a supermaket, but they gave amazingly thorough eye-tests - the type of 'push the button when you see the spots', 'focus on the picture in the tunnel' type as well as the usual letters, questions and colours. Dad was paying, and feeling generous (work must be good) so I got to choose two pairs :) I went slightly radical . . . for me anyway. So I'll have one pair of thick black-rimmed glasses, and one pair of thin red frames by next week :D wooooooo.
And now I'm sitting in front of the TV hoping to get some work done before I sleep at the usual crazy hour . . . I really need to get my body-clock sorted out this week. Deadline is approaching, and there's still a lot to do :-s

Edinburgh

I went to Edinburgh yesterday. I really love that city. Actually, what I really love about it is the park in the centre, the one near Waverly station, which the castle overlooks. Definitely in my top 5 parks :)
My friend was late (well, we hadn't agreed on a time, but I was aiming for 11-ish, and due to long car journeys, out of centre parking, and neither us knowing the place very well, we didn't meet up til 2.30. She's still amazing for driving all that way), so I spent a couple of hours exploring, reading in the park, and then in a coffee shop when it got too windy. There was an amazing display of unusual road signs in and around one of the shopping centres - 'Beware of Invisibility', 'Please check under your car for Penguins' etc etc. After we met up, we got pasties from the station (though annoyingly they'd given me a pizza one instead of steak and stilton - guess you can't really check with a pasty), and headed back to the park to eat. We had ice cream too, and a giggle. Then we decided we wanted to see a show, though our limited time meant we didn't have much choice of what to see . . . in the end we got some very cheap tickets for a cabaret act. But we had to put some money in the metre at the car park first, and by the time we'd dashed there, we thought we'd better drive back . . . and then we couldn't find anywhere to park. So we missed it, but I don't think either of us were too devastated - there's always next year.
Instead we headed off to Arthur's Seat. We didn't go right to the top, just for a walk on one of the lower levels - the view was stunnng though. I'd never realised how close Ed was to the sea. Which of course meant that, after inspecting the bizzare Scottish parliament building, we headed for the sea itself, or at least a drive along it. And then to the chippy :)
The drive back was fun - music a-blaring, and sat-nav at the ready- though we also drove through one of the worst rain storms I've ever seen, which was pretty scary. After much pondering my friend did stay over, getting up at 5am to head back home to work.

Today was pretty boring. Only thing I did of note was to watch Empire Strikes Back for the first time in years. Still a brilliant movie, even if Trek currently has a stronger grip on my sci-fi affections.

I should be asleeeeep . . .

. . .but there is beautiful music coming from BlogTV (eddplant) and I'm staying for this song. Work piece just finished (yey), a lot more of book read. ooooh, and I heard Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog for the first time today and it was AMAZING =) Cannot believe it took me so long to get round to watching it. It is just so me :D

And now I really must go to bed, as I'm off to Edinburgh at crazy-time tomorrow :-s

Star Trek

Ok, I admit it . . . I'm into Star Trek again. Like, big time :-s At first it was just the DS9 boxset, but thanks to Virgin 1's afternoon repeats of Voyager I'm now totally hooked on that for the first time too . . . .
What is it about Star Trek? I've always had a fondness for sci-fi, but Star Wars, Stargate, Twilight Zone and the others never had ths type of grip. And I must admit that I'm not a huge fan of the 'tech' episodes with the alterate timelines, or weird alien of the week etc. I guess all sci-fi has that totally escapist feel (unless it's the bleak, future earth type). Also, there's a type of deep friendship and romance in sci-fi which is kinda sweet but that would seem totally melodramatic and daft in any other genre - some of the Trek male friendship episodes are just so . . .gay. Which I would be totally fine with, only the conservative producers really don't intend them to be. Although playing 'spot the alternate story the Voyager actors who want gay storylines are trying to show us' can be pretty fun.
I guess what I'm tring to say is that I don't like Star Trek for the reasons I'm meant to like sci-fi. I like ST:NG because I adore both Patrick Stewart and Captain Picard, find Geordi very sweet, and Data rather attractive. The storylines are or the main part fluffy and cosy, and that's fine with me. I like DS9 for totally different reasons. DS9 is full of incredibly well-developed characters - pretty much every single one changes dramatically in the seven years, and has a large backstory to boot. You really only have to mention Sisko to me, or Kira, or Odo, and it's like being back with old friends. Plus, unlike most other Trek, it has an ongoing storyline that runs almost throughout. And not in the 'we're still exploring/heading home, let's stop off at yet another alien planet' sense, but in a way that means you have to keep track of the political alliances, ideologies and religions of a number of alien races and reoccuring characters from about series 2 onwards. The usually holy Starfleet is splintered and far from perfect, and so much of real history and American ideology is explored through fairly provocative stories - the writing is in a different league.
As for Voyager - well, who couldn't love that cast? They just sizzle with chemistry, and they make Trek look like so much fun, even when they're dying . . . it had some really underveloped character archs and misguided romantic pairings (Chakotay/Seven - :-s), it really should have got with the 24th century and introduced those gay storylines, and I'm still not too keep on the alien/phenomena a week thing . .. but when it was at it's best it was hilarious.
Just don't mention Enterprise.
75 days until the new film is out in dvd . . . I'm still hoping the hype will lead to another TV series being made, I'm worried that one day soon I'll have seen all the episodes :'(

Creativity

I miss writing just for the sake of writing. It’s something that I used to do a lot. Of course it helps if you’re in school, and they’re setting you the type of homework which you can lock yourself away with and fill page after page with words, ending someone else’s story, writing a poem on someone else’s topic. It’s not so easy when you’re meant to be coming up with all the ideas yourself. I’ve thought about fanfiction, but I don’t think it’s the type of thing that I could write. The type that I’d end up writing I really shouldn’t, and I havn’t got the creativity, or the interest, for anything more inspiring. I’d want it to be perfect. I‘d want it to slot seamlessly into the series, or follow on as if it had always been meant to be there, and that would require hours of research. Perhaps if I was one of those real fangirls that would be possible, but my little obsessions change topic so frequently that I never quite reach that point.

What about vampires? It seems to be the thing at the moment. Twilight, Moonlight, True Blood, Being Human. All with varying levels of success, and totally different styles, but all exactly the same core idea – vampires interacting in our world. That seems like the type of thing I could do. But how to make it original, and which mythology to go for?
And I like TV shows that mix genres. I love the idea of zombies and Jane Austen, or vampires in the middle of a Blitz flick. My sci-fi should be firmly set in the past. But everything I like I only like because I’ve seen it done before, and better than I could ever do. And so another summer passes with me barely writing anything at all, except the occasional letter to a pen-pal, some stuff for work, a few Facebook messages, and this blog. And this really needs to change.

In other news, after cleaning the house for about two days the landlords didn’t even look at it. The usual miscommunication, it was a chat and not an inspection. Ah well. Guess it’s good that the house is tidy anyways.

Goals

Well, my to-do list was eventually done, just a day late. I, and pretty much my whole family, have come down with a really horrible cold, and whilst cleaning and jigsaw were done yesterday, I was so exhausted that I didn't get any work done. Oooops.
But one unit of work was achieved today, and I'm hoping to embark on another one within the hour, so we're getting there. Writing in fron of Star Trek re-runs definitely helps, even if it makes things take much longer.

To-do tomorrow:
2 more work 'units' =)
Help clean house a bit
Video

Achooo!

Got up early to say goodbye to my grandad, who left on the train a few hours ago. And I seem to have caught my middle sister's head cold =( Of course, it being her, it has developed into a full-blown chest infection, so I really can't complain about my slight sniffle . . .but I will anyway. Lets hope its not swine flu :-s

So today? At least 1.5 pieces of work, finishing the jigsaw, finding a great poem to vlog, and tidying the bedroom a bit. I'll let you know how I get on.

Hmmm, yeah . . .

So it's been a while. Ooops. I love the fact that by 'a while' I now mean a couple of days instead of a few months =) A good sign I suppose. So what's been happening recently?

1. The discovery of 'The Twilight Zone'. Now balding actors with full heads of hair, ridiculously high-concept shows, unintentional humour. Fantastic stuff =)
2. The arrival of my missing Usbourne Superpuzzles book. Fiendlisly difficult.
3. Huge re-obession with DS9.
4. My grandpa is visiting.
5. Return of my rowdy younger siblings from camp.

Oh yeah, and a little bit of work.

I should write more

Decided that I need to write more. Not just blog posts and stuff for uni and work, but creative writing - stories, scripts. Or just fanfiction. Anything to get the imagination whirring again. I miss that all-consuming dreamworld that used to hit me at school, when I could write fourteen pages straight about any story topic given. These days a paragraph is difficult. I hate that my brain is slowly turning to lazy, tv-saturated mush during the holidays. I'm not even reading as much as I should. This needs to change.

Having said that, I'm more absorbed in Deep Space Nine than ever - forget the political and historical shows I always claim are my favourite, DS9 has always been where its at. And Twilight Zone arrived today. Havn't seen any of it yet but I am so darn hyped.

Just found out some news about someone I grew up with, and I won't go into it here, but sometimes life seems really unfair =( Or sometimes you realise just how precious good health is. Thoughts and prayers with him tonight.

My back hurts

Ouch ouch ouch. My back hurts. Not helped by my doing a jigsaw or a lengthy vlog today (think I'm beginning to get the hang of editing, woop). And I really need to catch up with the sleep I missed yesterday. So I'm off to bed.

Wii

I just spent 3 hours on the wii . . . .can't remember the last time I played a computer game for so long :-s It is called 'Disaster Day of Crisis' and has a crazy plot involving the hero running around shooting at an ex-navy armed gang, whilst trying to save his dead best friend's sister, rescue numerous citizens and perform firt aid, and escape a numer of natural disasters. He's only been a it from 8-9pm so far and has probably encountered more danger than the average SAS person does in a lifetime. And the dialogue is super cheesy, peppered with expletives. Fun times. I'm addicted already though.

Vlogging

I uploaded my first vlog today. Craziness, I know :) But I've been saying that I would for about a year now, and then I was the only person in the house this morning, so I thought I would try out the camera . . . .

It really has made me appreciate just how difficult and weird vlogging can be. Firstly, you neither sound or look anything like you think you do. My voice isn't quite as whiny as I'd been led to believe, but still . . . very strange seeing yourself on youtube!

Secondly, videos require a lot of retakes and editing. Like, a lot. Takes much longer than I thought it would.

Thirdly, you soon run out of things to say. I think unless you have a 'hook' of a particular style or theme you're aiming for it must be pretty difficult to be even vaguely interesting. I'm probably going to do a mixture of normal 'vlog' stuff, book and film reviews, and the occasional tame-ish rant. No idea how often I'm aiming to record at the mo.

In other news . . . we ordered a lot of the stuff for my dissertation today, so fingers crossed a large amount of JFK books and films will be arriving soon. I'm actually really excited :D 1960s nerds ftw! ooooh, and I ordered Twilight Zone and the last of the usbourne Superpuzzle books :) Double yey!

It is very late . . . .

Ouch, it is late. Again. And I failed to blog yesterday. Again.

Oh well. Today this is late because I was checking my emails, and then I checked youtube, and saw that Karen Kavett was doing a blogtv show. So i watched that instead of sleeping, ordered one of her amazing wallets and a rose, and now I'm very awake! Oh well. i did sleep in veeeeery late this morning . . .

The younger three siblings set off for Newday (a rocking Christian youth camp - fun and with some fantastic music), so its just me, Paul and the parents which is weird. Did mean that we could watch 'watchmen' in the middle of the day though (awesome film), and i can have my laptop turned up fairly loud even at 1.30am at night. Great stuff :) It'll be weird by the end of the week though.

Righty-ho, off to sleep now.

zzzzz

I need to tidy my room

I need to do many things, after yet another reasonably unproductive day. But tidying my room would produce the most visible results whilst taking the least time, so I'll probably do that.

The length of this post speaks volumes. What couldn't she type?

Dailybooth

I follow a few people on twitter who have Dailybooth, so I've taken a look at threads and profiles over the last few months, but I finally got round to taking my first picture today. Who knows how long I'll keep it up before I get bored, but for now it seems like a fairly harmless way to procrastinate, and a bit more creative than a lot of the things I waste my time on.

Purple

I have a new laptop, and it's purple. I'm sure there has never been a laptop of such purple beauty (except all those other laptops from the same section of the Dell website). It has cool games, an in-built camera with great microphones, a huge memory, and powerful speakers. It is also so frustrating to type on that it's already had me near tears twice.

This is the third time I've tried to type this blog post. The words disappeared without warning twice. The screen size has changed twice, 17 new tabbed browsers have appeared, and it has asked me if I want to search the internet on three occasions. On Word, the margin lines kept moving of their own accord. Often all these things happen at once. And I really don't know what I'm pressing to make this happen. The keyboard is bigger than I'm used to, but I can't be hitting buttons that make such changes that frequently can I? It's a great looking computer with fab features, but looks like the old typing will be suffering for the forseeable future :-s

To-Do Lists

As ever, I wrote myself a to-do list today, did the interesting tasks and ignored the less exciting. So the silk scarf is finished (and, whilst far from perfect, is a lot better than I feared it would be), geography quizzes have been taken (I'm trying to improve my terrible lack of general knowledge), and Radio 4 has been listened to (just discovered a three-part adaptation of 'The Spy Who Came in From the Cold' up on the iplayer. One of my all-time favourite books. Omg, I love the BBC :D). And the work is not :-s Oh well, still a few hours to go I guess.

Being creative

Oooops . . . very near to another BlogFail there.

Today was fairly lazy and uneventful. I slept in late, watched 'Starsky and Hutch' with Mum (who I think enjoyed it, despite her initial horror that it was a comedy and not a 'proper remake'), spent too long on the internet, watched some more DS9. Then I watched 'On Thin Ice' - they finally made it to the South Pole, but only just in one piece. The friendship between olympian James Cracknell and tv star Ben Fogle continues to confuse me, and once you'd thrown doctor Eddy it gets even stranger. It's amazing that they didn't die. What bizzare group dynamics. Mainly because two of them are both so intimidated by James that they can't do the necessary thing - rugby tackle him and force him to slow down - and his crazy behaviour puts him at risk time and again. When Eddy did take charge things seemed to get better. I did feel bad for James after his breakdown though - one that seemed about 30years in the making. Here's hoping that the James/Ben relationship will be less hero/worshipper and a bit more a balance of equals in the future. Made for great TV though! :)

And I've been working on painting a silk scarf for most of this evening. Pretending to be creative is very stressful. The pack that it came in provided many cardboard stands which have to be stuck to the table, with the scarf secured to them with pins, so it doesn't touch the table-top. But these cardboard stands are fairly useless, and keep unfolding themselves, so have to be readjusted every couple of minutes. And I've got 5 or 6 splodges where the colour has run to somewhere it should not be . . . nightmare! I think it's meant to be relaxing, but it really isn't. This is why I don't do the artsy/crafty stuff very often. Ah well. Hopefully it'll look ok-ish in the end.

BlogFAIL

So . . . I forgot to post anything yesterday. Oooops. I ended up being out for most of the day - Dad was travelling a couple of hours away for work, so me and Mum caught a lift with him and looked round some shops. When I got back I ended up watching trashy TV for most of the evening . . . and me and Paul watched the whole of the computer animated series about the duck and the alligator (Sitting Ducks?). So much funnier when you're older, lots of sentences can be taken diferently . . . we reckon it's all about being gay in small town America.

So today I read 'Interpretation of Murder' by Jed Rubenfeld. I bought it yesterday because it was cheap, and I remember it being really big a few years back. It's a fictionalised version of Freud's visit to New York in 1909, where the murder at the centre of the novel has been invented by the author, but a lot of the dialogue, people and other events are historically accurate. The 'notes' at the end go on for pages, as most of his research was gained from letters and newspapers and the like. Anyway, Freud appoints a follower of his teachings to help the police investigate a vicious murder and attack. I was originally a bit hesitant about reading it because I thought it might be a little boring and . . .Freudian, but it was fantastic. A total page-turner - after reading the first 50pages last night I read the remaining 450 today. It was a little grisly in places, and it was Freudian, but it did explain a lot of his theories in a way that made sense to me, and it didn't necessarily agree with them all. The mystery is incredibly complex, and weaves numerous characters, jealousies and corruption into it, but although there is almost no chance that you will solve it, it does ultimately make sense!

In other news . . . my new laptop arrives on Tuesday. I'm already excited!

I just spent the last hour or so 'following' Harry Potter actors' twitter accounts, and reading their old tweets. Beyond sad.

Paul got two things in the post today that made him very happy - the first being a Poe Bust wallet from Karen Kavett (yes, I am jealous! It is very awesome indeed :) ), and the second being Wii Sports Resort, which I think I'm gonna head downstairs to play now.

Until tomorrow! x

And onto the film . . .

I saw 'Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince' today. To be honest, my thoughts on it are still a bit of a jumble. It didn't help that I got very little sleep last night (mainly due to the crazy brightness of the streetlamp outside my window. It's getting to the point where something must be done. Hammers at the ready!), so I was a bit confused before I got in there.

I remember really enjoying the movie whilst it was on. Largely because it looks gorgeous, everything is so well lit, some of his simplest shots are absoloutely breath-taking, characters literally glow . . . and, as anyone who knows my film taste well will tell you, I'm often won over by movies that look pretty, almost regardless of plot. It was funny too, and seeing it with the siblings meant that we all sniggered at the wrong moments, and shrieked hysterically at anything intended to be humorous. And the acting of the whole cast has improved by leaps and bounds - I think David Yates must be brilliant to work with, as even the more minor characters have lost their awkwardness. It was nice to see the girl from Basil Brush playing Katie Bell. And, as everyone has been saying, Alan Rickman was fantastic, but Tom Felton was extraordinary, giving new depth to a character who is complex enough in the book, often with no lines.

But I'm wondering if reading the book the day before the movie was a mistake. I'm very glad I watched the film aterwards and not before, but a longer gap between the two would have been a good idea. Noticing all the differences from the plot, big and little, got in the way of appreciating the film for what it was, and I left the cinema in one of those die-hard 'they got it all wrong' moods, which I've never had with Harry Potter. I think the big 3 for me were the constant references to the cabinet from a couple of scenes in, when it's meant to be a big mystery; the missing out a whole chunk of story about the Muggle world/PM/ Ministry of Magic; and the absence of large sections of Voldemort backstory (surely what this film is meant to be about). Other additions/omissions (Tonks+Lupin, Bill+Fleur, Dobby, the crazy Burrow Attack) were sad, but more understandable in terms of pace, though you wonder how much extra stuff they'll have to cram in to the final two-parter just to make it make sense. Other minor character develepment things were frustrating though - most crucially, as far as I'm concerned, the switch of 'he'll kill my family' with 'he'll kill me', which seemed to partly undermine the symapthy they'd built up for Draco. It's the pointless little word swaps that make me annoyed with the screenwriter. And, now I'm looking for it, I can see what is meant by Steve Kloves creating his own, far less believable, versions of J.K's characters, largely by reassigning lines. Oh, and I was frustrated that they kept so much teenage romantic angst in at the expense of more important parts of the book.

But that's enough complaining. As a film it is fantastic. It does everything a good family flick should, it's funny, tragic, scary, exciting, it shows teenagers in a fairly realistic light, it has characters that you care about deeply. It gleams with quality in every aspect (apart, perhaps, from the script), and it looks so good that you'll want to wrap it round you like a blanket and take a nap, or eat it or something. I'm already wanting to see it again.

Snape, Snape, Severus Snape

I read 'Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince' today. I'm seeing the film tomorrow morning, and although I'd claimed that I had no time to read it, and that it might be fun to watch the film first (and therefore enjoy it as a film, without knowing all the twists and turns beforehand), a whole host of youtube reviews was enough to change my mind. The conclusion seems to be that the film, despite some of the best acting and most stylish directing in the franchise, leaves out a number of fairly crucial plot elements (such as the explanation of horcruxes), and continues to not allow room for much character develepment. Slightly worried that I might get to the film only to not understand it, I plunged into the book with a day to go.

As it was, it really didn't take me long to read. All credit to J. K Rowling - it was a really gripping novel, I havn't read like that for a long time. I think it may be my favourite so far - I know a lot of people see it as a 'filler' book without much going on until the last few chapters, but I like it when there's a bit more space to enjoy Hogwarts for the wonderful place that it is, and to watch all those teenage personalities clash and change. It was great to see Draco become a more complex character, and it's got to the point when all the 'minor' Hogwarts students seem to be real people too. Dumbledore was as mysterious, charming and heart-breaking as ever. And I continue to be totally fascinated by Tom Riddle. My favourite part of the series is probably the Voldermort back-story, and I still have a strong attachment to the 'Chamber of Secrets' (even the film), so I've been excited about this one ever since I heard what it was about. If J.K. ever does more spin-offs some extra Tom Riddle would be much appreciated, thank you. Her writing style also seems a world away from the first novel - I'd always seen her as a fantastic storyteller, but perhaps not a great writer, but I loved the way she wrote this book.

Then, of course, there was Snape. Here it is probably best to explain that I have a complicated relationship with the Harry Potter series. I went to the type of faith school where one or two teachers were strongly against the books and that meant that very few of us read them - as a phenomena it largely passed us by. We were aware that a lot of people were talking about them, but Hogwarts hysteria didn't grip our school like it did almost every other. I didn't pick up the first book, therefore, until my youngest brother and sister (then nine, now thirteen) became obsessed with them. I'm struggling to remember if I saw the first few films before the books or afterwards - I think it was all roughly in the same couple of months. And I really like them. But having missed out on them at the age when they would have been really influential, because I'm the type of girl who does get swept up into these worlds, and because I'm from the generation who grew up at the same time that Harry, Ron and Hermione did, it's always been a little bittersweet for me. I've never had that level of devotion to them, I've always started reading the novel knowing 90% of what was going to happen, and the people I see in my head as I read are the actors in the films.

Which makes analysing characters like Snape in this book so difficult. I love Snape. He is probably my favaourite character. But I worry that a lot of this is because he is played by Alan Rickman in the films, and I love Alan Rickman. I'm also concerned that a lot of how I felt in this book was affected by how much I knew about the next one. I liked Snape in HPB, I felt his pain, sympathised with his predicament, and found myself increasingly frustrated at Harry for being totally oblivious. But for readers at the time, those who had queued up all night to get the book on its day of release, who then read it within 24 hours, did they feel like this? J.K. seems to spell it out, but does she really? Would I have found it 'obvious' from the first chapter if I didn't already know how it all ends? Would I, like Harry, have felt furious and betrayed by Snape? I wonder. Oh the confusion of The Girl Who Got Left Behind. :)