Night in With the Mates

Just had to get an entry in whilst it's all still fresh in my mind....Ok this probably won't make much sense to anyone but me, but I don't care.

In the flat Josh and Ellen were round and Dan was in top form....Ellen struggled to tell a story about going to Rome looking at a statue which she didn't know was the Virgin Mary, not funny when it's written down but the first time she told the tale only dogs could hear it, the second she was crying from laughter and finally she managed to complete the story...By which time we were laughing hard purely because Ellen was.

Then there was Ellen's fixation/fantasy about a bath filled with melted Chocolate and a Battenberg, like I said this will mean nothing to most just a chosen few.

One of Dan's old teachers pronounces develop as devollup and I laughed so hard I turned into Mutley. On the back of this we have decided to start pronouncing random words wrong to see if it catches on.

By the way Dan has comic timing which is pure genius and, freakily we were studying the construct of a Comedic script only today, brings up stuff mentioned a the beginning of a conversation at the perfect moment for much hilarity.

Oh a the less said about 'raping, bumming, Jesus!' the better.......I love my flat!

Back In Southampton

Er....does what it says on the tin really. LThe last semester of my 2nd year now and I should be doing work....or unpacking, but i've got to get up early tomorrow to go to lectures so I can't be arsed to do either....so I'm watching the 2nd half of Sharpe's Challenge instead, Ah Sean Bean....a little rougher round the edges than he used to be but still Sharpe none the less!

Observation of the Day

It is very early in the day so my opinion may change in the next 22hrs, but at the moment the observation is thus.....never watch Never Mind the Buzzcocks whilst drinking water and using the computer as expensive electrical shortages may occur!

My Own Stupidity Astounds Me!

I finally got in another walk with my pa yesterday near West Dean woods and to a little pub hidden away at Hooksway. It was very pleasant walking through the woods and along a bit of the South Downs Way but in my keenness to be a proper walker, I had a stick and everything, I forgot to wear decent thick socks whilst wearing my hardcore boots. Within 20 minutes I had blisters on the bottom of both feet and when I started walking on the edge of my feet I somehow managed to pull muscles in both of my legs. I had to wuss out after I'd walked around 6 miles and reached Chilgrove and sent dear old dad to fetch the car! Yes I suck and it was such a girlie thing to have happen.....grrrrrr!

Doctor Who and Repeat

Just watched the first episode of the new series of doctor Who....Not as good as it could have been but I'm an addict and like to see series through so I won't be tuning out. David Tennant is pulling off the Doctor just fine, and I love his wardrobe...retro chic and yet decidely Doctor quirky. So anyway the upcoming episodes look good...Next week Queen Vic vs. A werewolf and might I say that Rose looks very Buffy circa 1997 in the dungarees. Oh and a brief clip of an unspecified episode had me reminiscing about another of Russell T's TV series aimed at kids from my own childhood.....Dark Seasons, and specifically the first three episodes.


For thoses with the memory of a gnat this brilliant CBBC drama was on in 1991 and about a girl called Marcie and her friends Thom and Reet (a young Kate Winslet), outcasts at school and always thinking the world is out to get them. Marcies gives new meaning to the term eccentric (a bit like the good Doctor) and carries allsorts of essential items in her school bag, including a paddle (because 'you never know when you'll be up the creek') and is instantly suspicious when a kindly benefactor Mr. Eldrich ( tall blonde guy in a Blues Bros esque suit and shades) donates a load of top notch (for the 90's) personal computers for every child in the school. Long story short the computers will brainwash the unsuspecting kids when they switch them on and only Marcie and the gang can stop the evil Eldritch from world domination. It was a fantastic kids drama and I'm lucky enough to have an, unofficial, DVD.....But dear friends Mr Davies has also not forgotten the one time drama as I glimpsed in the trailer for upcoming episodes of Doctor Who a bunch of kids sitting in front of their computers at school, emitting a strange green glow, and a crazed Tony Head (Giles,Buffy) running the halls....the episode is number 3, School Reunion, and I for one will be looking out for the Dark Season comparisons.

Walks and Hunts

What a lovely day it was yesterday, Spring but with a touch of Winter, the wind was chuffing freezing. Still my pa and I made the most of it by walking from Arundel to Amberly across the fields and along the river Arun. It was around 5 miles and we stopped for lunch in Burpham where there were a small herd of, get this, Bison. Now I've never seen a real live Bison before and this particular herd, behind the church, were awesome and even had a calf which was soooooo cute. We continued walking on this old smugglers route and came across a suspension bridge at the edge of a field, kind of in the middle of nowhere really. Ahhh the oddities of the sussex countryside.

So after my attempt at ambling during the day, my evening was spent at Reigate caves up in Surrey, doing my ghostbusting effort. The caves a pretty interesting, even if the guys which run them are a little more than strange. For the most part not much happened, an unfortunate trait of this particular hobby, but saying that i did gat an annommally on one of my pics (bottom left corner). I can tell you what it's not; it's not a stone, sand, a reflection, smoke or someone's breath....what i can't tell you is what it is.

Don't Panic!!!

Nice to know that the trusty British news broadcasters don't intend to produce a panic state amongst viewers over this old bird flu business. Switched on the TV today and it's all 'Bird flu reaches the UK!' 'Should we be worried about eating chicken!' 'Have the government done enough!' 'Are we at risk!' blah, blah, blah. My take on the whole thing.....Quit worrying! There's not much we can do about it anyway and,, at the moment it's not even transferable human to human...You've got more chance of being hit by a bolt of lightening and for fucks sake if you find a dead bird, don't pick it up! We'll all get along just fine and I won't have to shout at you for being stupid. And as for the news broadcasters stop pretending to be all American about it, report on the stupidity of Bush instead...Hours of entertainment for all the family there and pretty much guaranteed never to run out of material, so everyone's happy.

Oops I've Been Slacking

Okay, so I know it's been a while, just over a week since my last posting to be exact. But then again I've had a hectic one.

I had lectures and filming early last week then I found I had to come home a couple of days earlier than predicted because my old man had to go in for surgery and wouldn't be able to pick up me, or more accurately all my junk. So I was way busy trying to get the reading which I needed for over Easter, packing and squeezing in a couples of sessions at the gym.

So anyway I'm home...Back to my little place in the sun, and what a lush few days we've had down here in Bognor....sunniest place in the UK I'll have you know, so suck on that Miami!!

The best thing about being back, well I haven't had the chance to catch up with friends yet so this at the mo is top, and that's Sky TV people, oh and a Limewire connection which doesn't take a millennia to download.

I've certainly been making the most of the latter in the last few days, I hate to wait for stuff, especially when said stuff is excellent dramas such as prison Break or Navy: NCIS so I've pretty much downloaded the lot. My poor computer is showing me what it's made of that's for sure....Now if it could only download a life sizedWentworth Miller or Jensen Ackles ;-)

The Quirky World of Australian Soap

Okay...so I hate to return to this soap once again but the goings on in the Neighbours street are getting a little bizarre, so you have the regular type storylines, Janae worrying whether she has an STD and the various up/down relationships (currently the most interesting is the one between Toadie and Connor which sees them morphing into Lou and Harold) but then there was today's episode, which actually intergrated a musical number between Ned and Sky (oh and here's a piece of trivia; for those who don't already know Ned was the winner of Australia Idol and the guy who plays his brother Stuart was runner up of their version of Big Brother). So then Neighbours: The Musical?

Then there is of course Home and Away, the show which bought us dead people morphing out of a fridge now has dead people making Irene dinner, in scenes not too disimilar from a Sixth Sense ( though without the angry ghosts and the missing back of the head of a teenage boy). So obviously Irene is in somekind of complete mental breakdown, but it makes truely bizarre viewing. Then there was the closing credits when, after just witnessing the dinner with dead people scene, I voiced my slightly confused state by saying that it was a bit freaky...cut in announcers voiceover 'Freaky....absolutely'. I was like a scene from the Turman Show people!

Four Words!

Harry Hill's TV Burp.....excuse me but just what were ITV thinking, I admit I'm not really a Harry Hill fan, he just doesn't do it for me I'm afraid, but what on Earth is this mediocre comic doing on a prime time Saturday night viewing slot with a serious dodgy and totally unfunny look at the weeks television. For half an hour the viewer is subjected to canned laughter and, dare i say, applause for satirical examples from the soaps, odd dialogue, corny plots and bad acting for example (which anyone who watches soaps is not unaware of especially in the case of Corrie) but then there is also these ridiculous comedic, and i use the term extremely loosely, skits featuring Hill himself which are not only unfunny but have an element of the uncomfortable and the cringeworthy which I really don't think the British public should be subjected too.....Yes of course I could have changed the channel but Saturday night viewing is notoriously crap and my other choices at the time were: 'All time greatest movie songs', 'Flog It!', 'Supernanny' (a repeat) and 'Everbody Hates Chris' (also a repeat....which by the way is a whole other blog entry waiting to be written!)....so in conclusion I say 'come back Bullseye all is forgiven!'.

Neighbours pt 2

How can Paul be so deluded...even Izzy's onto Harold, and she should know a schemer when she sees one after all her schnannigans, but no Paul thinks he's trying to help him...by rattling windows and pulling out the phone cord when he's having a panic attack....it is indeed corny but all the same great afternoon television....what will the flipped out Harold do next? replace Paul's prosthetic leg with a rubber one and hang his favourite teddy....with Harold anything is possible, he's a man on the edge.

When Neighbour's Go Bad

In the storyline of the decade mild mannered, tuba playing, Samaritan Harold Bishop has been pushed over the line and gone all psycho and the victim of his wrath is none other than the formerly evil Paul Robinson. Lets face it people poor Harold hasn't had the best time of it over the years, he's recently lost his son and his family in a plane crash, his wife (the legendary Madge) died about five years ago, his daughter Kerry was killed on a duck hunt protest and Harold himself 'died' but was then found with a complete loss of memory years later. It's enough to drive anyone over the edge to be fair, but the bloke finally cracked last week and attempted to strangle Paul Robinson...somehow (a powercut caused me to miss the next episode) he managed to get away with that and poor old Paul has been suffering panic attacks ever since. Then this evening Harold turned all psycho again, knocking on windows and rattling blinds until Paul had some kind of seizure through fear. Harold chose his moment and pulled out the phone cord, hovering over the stricken man looking all threatening (I know it's hard to imagine Harold looking threatening....but if you squint it is possible) when.....to be continued.....

Thorpe Park Fun

My flatmate Ally's birthday is actually today but we decided a trip to Thorpe Park was is order whilst everyone was around. It was great fun, f**kin' freezing but great fun. We went on most things and I screamed and laughed alot....oh and we managed to not get stuck on the Slammer ride which a ton of people were stuck on for an hour in close to freezing temps when it broke down (oops).

The day went something like....up at stupid o'clock to drive up to Thrope Park, stood in a queue as it tried to snow getting tickets (eventhough we'd booked online), got in and headed straight for Vortex (a huge pengelum thingy which scared the crap out of me), stood in a queue for 45mins to go on Colossus (a rollercoaster with 9 or 10 twists one after the other), went inside to get warm and eat lunch, watch the other nutters of the gang go on Stealth (0-80 in 2.3 sec then up 205ft followed immediately by the drop!), across to nemesis Inferno (like the one in Alton Towers but better),Nat and I did the Monkee walk (badly) while the others tried their luck in the amusements, watched the gang go on the rapids (it was barely above freezing with a windchill which chilled us to the bone and Nigel wants to go on a ride which you get soaked...I don't think so), back on nemesis Inferno, back on Stealth (again I was a bit chicken/chief photo taker) then home.

After that wicked day, and after we thawed out, it was back to the flat for drinks, snacks and the opening of Ally's pressies....the only problem was that we were all a bunch of lightweights and slightly windburnt so we were all nodding by midnight....still we have copeous amounts of alcohol for a rainy day!

Creative Avoidance

Okay...So I have a presentation due on Wed, which I have yet to start but since I'm stalled on that right now I thought I'd write up a quick entry to my Blog instead...Then I might go and cook dinner, write an email or two, read a book, watch a DVD, clean the loo and probably do the presentation about 5 mins before it's due in.

Due South's been showing from the start on ITV 3 which is a ball, forgotten just how good and slightly surreal that show was, and how good looking the Mountie is. (which is the vote from the whole flat and not just my opinion so it must be true.)

In other news an Isle of Wight ferry crashed into the hard injuring 9 people last Friday, bit stupid if you ask me...Did the driver not see the huge mass of land, called the British Isles, approaching on his bow....doh!

The return of Hustle

Yes, the best show by far on the box returned last night and was quite an event in our flat, as we all bundled into Ally's room with eats and drink to enjoy the show. The storylines are as tight as ever, with a great performance from Mel Smtih by the way, and yet again I was wondering how on earth the team were going to get out of this complete f**k up with all their teeth (I have a feeling that the white haired bloke who was the original target might make another appearance toward the end of the series). And bless his heart if Eddie the barman didn't go and get in on the hustle for once, before being fleeced by the gang yet again. To sum up then; great writing, great acting, brilliantly edited ( and I love those frozen time sequences)....Here's to the next few weeks of top entertainment.

In other news, the cold has pretty much gone and, even more importantly, food no longer closely resembles the consistency of cardboard, I managed to write a 1,000 word essay in one night, we're going to Thorpe Park for Ally's 21st in a coupla weeks....And just when exactly did Grange Hill turn into Hollyoaks for the under 15's (it's just all gone terribly wrong there somewhere).

Quiet Night In

First off...Cold has progressed to a complete loss of voice, much to the amusement of my fellow flatmates, apparently I sound like a cross between Darth Vader and Orville the Duck?!? Was sposed to have dinner with the folks this afternoon but since my appetite has completely abated I phoned them to get a rain cheque, not that they could understand a word I said and in retrospect a text message would have been more appropriate....They came for a visit anyway, bringing some essentials; tissues, cough syrup, chicken soup and a big bag of jam doughnuts.....Lovely if I actually wanted them but I have to sit by and watch everyone else in the flat munch away while I hack up another phlegm ball (pretty image for ya there, feel my pain).

So, a quiet night in, in more ways than one and I'm running out of entertainment on the box, I caught the tail end of the eurovision thing and what I saw was not inspiring, some middle aged plonker trying to rap surrounded by twentysomething women dancers dressed in school uniform, both singing about preventing kids turning to crime whilst eerily looking decidedly dodgy.

And to the worst thing on, so far, tonight (Planet of the Apes being on C4 later) Casualty. I remember watching this as a kid and often being quite scared at the situations and blood, I don't think modern day kids have much to worry about. Boring, and gapingly obvious, plotlines with nothing slightly on the dramatic side, little blood, crap dialogue and even worse acting from the principle actors and especially the guest actors. In all pretty piss poor for a Saturdays' night viewing....I'd change the channel if I wasn't too ill to reach the remote.

Daytime

Currently ill in bed with a bad cold, I want to comment on the crapness of daytime TV....repeats, dodgy soaps, repeats, crappy chatshows...countdown (the only entertaining thing on), war films or westerns (BBC2 and C4 really need to update thier movie list) oh and did I mention repeats. How difficult is it to put on decent TV during the day...I have digital which repeats stuff endlessly, even showing the same programme several times on the same day...Is that what i pay my license for.....bloody repeats!

Top Weekend!

As it says on the tin.....saw Editors, whom I previously knew nowt about but absolutely rocked! then back to the flat where there was copious amounts of alcohol and a drinking game in full swing. The pics (of publishing quality) will be posted when I manage to scrounge copies of folk; highlights include trolley surfing, lift streaking and what is best described as socks...only a select few have the inside knowledge on that one!












In other news Life On Mars finished it's meger 8 episode run on Mon night, not that I'm complaining about the show because it's the dogs but 8 episodes, come on people, throw some funding Kudos' way already would ya! roll on the next season! at least there's still Prison Break and Supernatural to take away the post life on Mars blues.

Just remembered I forgot it was pancake day today.....poo....then again I had waaaay too much choc stuff over the weekend....off to get me some bifidus digestivum!

Monday Nights' Entertainment and Morning Swearing

Just like to start by saying how cool Monday nights are for TV drama at the mo, Life On Mars (BBC 1) at 9pm, Prison Break (Five) at 10pm and Supernatural (ITV 1) 11pm....eventhough we are about to lose the inventive and outstanding Life On Mars after next week. They're fab shows with enough intrigue, action and humour to keep me tuning in week after week and, in the case of Life On Mars especially, the concept and cast are fantastic and Gene is halerious..... 'drop your weapons, you're surrounded by armed bastards.' pure genius!

Prison break is getting along quite nicely and it's not as simple as the title may suggest with conpiracytheory, men in black and a Martha Stewart mafia Don type....and of course there's the tattoo/map concept, which is a perfectly reasonable excuse for Wentworth Miller to get his kit off at least once per episode.

Supernatural, in contrast, is more formulaic than the other dramas but by 11pm....and what's with the sheduling by the way, some of us have to get up at stupid o'clock for lectures the next day....I care not so much for the demanding or, in the case of Lost annoying, deep plots and tandem narratives and really just want to kick back, relax and watch some entertaining television, which Supernatural certainly fills to expectation....It helps also that Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki are very easy on the eye.

So, viva Monday nights, and I'm hoping that the end of Life On Mars will initiate the start of the new series of Hustle which will enable the continuation of the two thumbs up Monday night in front of the box for a while longer.

In other news, poor Radio 1 DJ Chris Moyales was in trouble for swearing on air, and to be fair I'm very surprised that this has never come up before. He recieved, get this, 11 complaits for telling a caller to shut her 'f**king brats' up who were making alot of noise on the other end of the line....well in my opinion (the only one which counts right this second) 11 out of several hundred thousand is not even worth farting on and Chris' completly accurate on his description of children, therefore no apology is actually necessary....and to those 11 people who did complain....that's radio 4 I believe you were meaning to tune into.

New Computer

yay....at last a computer which doesn't keep burning out on my ass. It's an Inspiron 6000 from Dell with centrino intel inside, extra memory, a 14.5 screen, dvd RW and a thundercats desktop!

But mostly it just works...which was all i was askin' for really...I spent the better part of the day reloading all my files from my old laptop via a memory stick....I'm sure there's probably an easier way but I'm not excactly that great with the whole age of technology thing so that had to do.

Aslo since I had to go home to pick the thing up it means a weekend with sky television....this may not be a big deal to most.....but dude....it's SKY! 24, NCIS, CSI, SG:1, BFG, MiB (ok so the last two probably don't count but you get my drift)