Even By My Standards, This Is Wilfully Obscure

I'm probably showing both my age and my strange cultural exposure here, but what the heck...

Barry Mooncult of short-lived 'baggy' beat group Flowered Up, and a chap advertising Be Internet

Separated at birth? Or both customers of the same horticulturally-influenced tailor? You be the judge.

Bright Lights, My City

I live, as I've probably mentioned several million times before, in London. And I love it - the city's endlessly fascinating, and it's been kind to me, bringing me a number of opportunities and friends I doubt I would have encountered elsewhere (and yes, that includes my lovely wife).

So, it's with an utterly ill-founded sense of pride (seeing as how I wasn't actually born in London, as much as I consider it my home) that I provide you with the link to this page, where you can see a selection of frankly stunning aerial pictures of London taken at night by the ferociously talented photographer Jason Hawkes.

The picture reproduced here, I hope, gives you a hint of the delights that await you - and yes, I chose this one because it's a view of my manor, East London. Other than that, and unusually for me, I have little else to add - save that to point out that the picture above is, of course, totally and utterly copyright Jason Hawkes, and the reproduction here is done out of respect and awe as opposed to any kind of attempt to infringe!

Anyway, stop reading my semi-disclaimer, and get thee to the pictures!

If I Scribble The Name In A Hurry, It Looks More Like Tate Modem

Thanks to Lianne for pointing out that the Tate Modern art gallery is running a story-writing competition; in conjunction with its current TH.2058 installation, you're invited to write a 1500 word piece in keeping with the themes. The prize is quite an interesting one - six stories will be selected to be included in a downloadable audiobook, which will be read by Christopher Eccleston.

The competition closes on Sunday, and if you want to read my entry, Brittle, it was posted on the site this morning (they moderate entries to make sure there are no offensive or libellous aspects, which seems sensible), and you can see it by clicking here.

Let me know if you have a go, and if you want to comment on my story, by all means do so.

It Ships 'Second Quarter 2009' Though, So It'd Be Too Late For Valentine's Day

Available to pre-order now is this little beauty - well, actually it's wildly inaccurate to call it 'little', as it's 7'8" tall, and comes with poseable arms.

So, you can set it up in the bathroom at night with outstretched arms to freak out your nearest and dearest. And the cost to do so? A mere $4999.95 (about £3500).

Y'know, I can't decide if it's one of the most preposterous or amusing items to purchase I've ever seen in my life. Maybe it's both?

Art For Art's Sake (Money, For God's Sake)

This morning I received a remittance advice for a wee bit of writing (a joke I sold, so it's small in wordcount and audience alike), which makes it the first bit of money I've received for my writing in ... oh, an alarmingly long time.

The dream, of course, is to make a living from writing and nothing else, but I'm aware that this is a long way off. One step at a time, of course, and I'm fortunate in that the day jobs I've had since I started writing (which would be, come to think of it, every job I've ever had since the age of 18) have generally left me with enough mental energy remaining to do some writing in my free time, and sometimes to even make a sale.

Anyway, selling the joke (and doing so in the first couple of days of the year) feels like a good start to 2009, though, and I hope it'll just be the first of many... though of course it's less a question of hope, and more one of
work, a fact which I'm very much bearing in mind.

I Hope Someone Tells Them - After All, The Original Name Of The Main Chap In Star Trek : Enterprise Was (Apparently) Jeffrey Archer

I see that a new incarnation of the 1980s SF series 'V' has been announced.

Let's hope that they don't decide to go with the same name for the main character...

I'm Sure There's A Word That I Could Remove From This Title

I was re-reading Bill Martell's '16 Steps To Better Descriptions' today, courtesy of a reminder link on Lucy's site.

It's a good solid chunk of advice, and I heartily recommend it to you. One line in particular caught my attention :

"The easiest two words to trim out of a sentence are AND and BUT. Usually these words are completely unnecessary. Cut them."

I agree completely, but I'm actually acutely aware that (as well as lengthy sentences with excessive sub-clauses), one of my writing habits is the overuse of the word 'that'. Not as a pronoun, but rather as a linking word, when a lot of the time it's superfluous - as in 'I know [that] you've got the treasure map, now hand it over', to quote a line I said just this morning (don't ask).

So, in the spirit of sharing and confession, which words or phrases - if any - are you aware you overuse? Are there certain words which you have to keep an eye out for in re-reading, and invariably find yourself removing as unnecessary? Do share, I'd feel better if I wasn't the only one who's openly flawed.

Not that there's anything wrong with being aware of this sort of thing, of course - after all, Arthur Conan Doyle uses the word 'singular' repeatedly in describing Holmes's cases (which strikes me as a bit of a paradox), and Damon Runyon used the phrase 'more than somewhat' so often that it became almost a catchphrase, and eventually the title of one of his books.

So, no shame in it - which is to say: go on, 'fess up!

Sunday's Child Is Identical Of Face

The pictures are rather contrary to the way the characters normally behave in their respective roles, but nonetheless, submitted for your comparison: Kane 'Often Jason Vorhees' Hodder as serial killer Dennis Rader in the film BTK, and Nick Frost as Mike Watt in cracking TV comedy Spaced.

(If you haven't seen either of these items, in all conscience, I can only recommend you watch Spaced. Despite BTK being based on real-life events, Spaced is actually the more believable.)

This Sale Must End Midnight Sunday

As we all know, the television production company Kudos have a nice line in popular and stylish TV programmes.

However, they're not the first to have done so - there were a number of TV programmes in the 1960s and 1970s which were similarly smooth but also very entertaining. An obvious example would be The Prisoner, the classic TV series featuring the recently-passed Patrick McGoohan (not to be confused with Play School presenter Stuart McGugan, as happened more than once when I was growing up).

Anyway, all this is a typically lengthy preamble to alerting you good people to the fact that Network, a firm specialising in DVDs and soundtracks of many of the shows from this era, is currently running a sale on its website, with most items being 40% off.

So if you're into Danger Men, Men In Suitcases, or even Motels At The Crossing Of Two Roads, you might want to have a gander before the sale ends at midnight on Sunday.

(I have no affiliation or bias in relation to Network, just wanted to make sure that you folks get to take advantage of the reduced prices. I like to think you'd do the same for me...)

Eeeh, I Remember When Albums Were a Foot Wide By a Foot High, And Sometimes They Even Came In Gatefold Format

The results were recently announced for the 2008 Art Vinyl prize for best record cover - here's the BBC News link - and because I'm hip to the sound on the trip-hop streets, I thought I’d share two of the top three with you fine people.

The winner was the Fleet Foxes album, and in third place was Coldplay (both pictured here).

However, the reason I picked these two is because they don't really strike me as particularly worthy of the prize - they are, after all, pre-existing pictures by Bruegel and Delacriox, with a few words added in white. I know there's a debate to be had about the nature of art and creation and found objects and all that, but given that second place went to a wholly new image - and a pretty creepy one at that - on the recent Roots Manuva album (see it in glorious scare-icolour here), I think that it seems to be rewarding designer for cleverly choosing bits of old art as opposed to creating new images of their own.

Then again, looking at Art Vinyl's own website, it seems to be more about the sale of frames in which to hang your vinyl albums on the wall as opposed to the sleeve art itself, so maybe I've just been duped into wasting braintime thinking about something which is little more than a thinly-veiled advertising ploy.

Darn it.

Then again, it appears that the news-gathering forces of the BBC were equally fooled, so I shan't blame myself too much.

Besides, I never liked vinyl as a format very much when I was a youth in the 1980s, it was far from easy to play on my Walkman.

One Of My Intermittent Posts About Twin Peaks, This Time With Pictures

I've written before about my fondness for the TV show Twin Peaks, and I'll no doubt do so again (perhaps, one day, even explaining why I like it so), and in case you haven't guessed it by the start of this sentence... well, this is one of those posts. If you're not interested in this subject, normal service (if that's what it can be called) will be resumed as of the next post.

Anyway - for those of you who are still here - I was rather amused to hear that a Twin Peaks variant of a range of skateboarding trainers was being released; partly because it's almost two decades since the show was last on TV, and also because I'm 37 years old, for goodness' sake, and the idea of trainers featuring motifs from a TV show really shouldn't elicit the question 'Where can I get them?' and have me reaching for the internet so quickly. Still, I think we've established I'm an overgrown infant, and so the pictures surrounding these words are pictures I've actually taken of my shoes, which I received yesterday.

The first picture gives you a general idea of the trainer - as you can see immediately, there's an owl pictured on it, in line with one of TP's signature phrases (or should that be warnings?) "The owls are not what they seem". As well as the green stitching along the shoe, and the spare green laces supplied, there's a hint of patterning on the 'grey' area which might be faintly fern-like or leafy, but that might be me looking for more of a bucolic motif than is actually present.

The second picture is perhaps not a usual angle to take a photo from, but people with perhaps even a passing familiarity with TP will probably understand why I did it; the red sides of the inside of the shoe, combined with the zig-zag pattern on the insole, combine to create an in-shoe replica of the 'Red Room', one of the series' most memorable locations (if indeed it has a physical existence). Only certain people can enter the room, and in certain circumstances, but with these shoes any old clown (by which I mean me) can at least send their feet in. And, for what it's worth it, they're really rather comfy.

I'm no kind of trainer expert - though my father often maintains that I "should be trained by now, surely?" - but these seem well made, and comfy, with enough extras and doodads to keep Twin Peaks fans amused. How they work for skateboarding or other physical activities I couldn't say, but there will probably be proper reviews elsewhere on the internet of that sort of thing. Oh, and one final touch I forgot to mention - the paper surrounding the shoes (in the box they arrived in) has a wood-style print on them, which seems to continue the generally 'nature-based' look of the whole package.

Overall, then, a nice job on a slightly odd choice of TP-tie in, and they've brought a smile to my face and a slightly increased bounce to my step. I got mine from Flatspot, and the service was very good, though of course other firms should be able to supply them.

Does, As They Say, Whatever A Spider Can

Spotted yesterday on the side of a fairly tall London building; a window-cleaner who, in the absence of one of those lower-you-down cradle things, was abseiling down the side of the building, washing the windows as he went.

You can make out the bucket, which was suspended from his waistband.

Fair made me grin as I made my way into work, it did.

I Thought Madonna Had Sworn Off Acting After The Bad Reaction To 'Swept Away'?

This was the poster they put out here in the UK - oddly enough, the theatrical poster used in other countries doesn't make Julianne Moore look like herself either.

What's all that abaht, then?

And I Won't Be Surprised If The 'Pretzel Fainting Incident' Is Revealed, In His Memoirs, To Be Something Rather Different

It's an embarrassing thing when a band or music artiste you like puts out a not-so-good album, especially if you've previously been vocal in praising them. And in much the same way, it's awkward for people who've made allegiances to political parties or even particular politicians, only for them to do something boneheaded or prove themselves unworthy of that support.

That said, I think that the annals of history are unlikely to view George W. Bush as a very good president at all. In fact, all things considered, I think it's probably very likely that he'll be viewed as the worst president that the USA has ever had. And, to my mind, rightly so.

Putting aside the issue of the non-finding of bombs or similar in Iraq - let's leave that as the GOP elephant in the room, as it were - and the fact that he permitted torture and detention without charge (both in contravention of the UN Declaration on Human Rights) on his watch, let's look at the record from the only perspective which seems to matter to many people - that is, the economic angle.

When Bush entered office, the federal budget surplus was $127bn. Last year, the federal budget deficitreached $455bn, and is expected to top $1trillion this year. That's not good, is it? Obviously, a lot of this has been caused by expenditure on … er, let's say international diplomacy, but even more of it is the result of the current economic situation, much of which appears to have been caused by banks. Now, one might argue that this should be blamed by the banks, but if you're in charge of a country, you have the power to regulate banks; if you don't do so and it all goes round the U-bend, it's about as surprising as … um, well, the last time this happened as a result of unregulated lending institutions lending too much money on bad mortgages. Those who don't learn from history are indeed condemned to repeat it.

Anyway, it's all too easy to kind of write off Bush as a joke president, and the last eight years as some kind of comedic aberration, which would be fine if it many of the consequences of the last two presidential terms weren't so un-funny. Here, though, is my favourite Bush-era joke, courtesy of Alan Moore:
Q: What do you call an eight-year-old Iraqi kid with no arms, surviving family members, or unblackened skin below his waist?
A: I don't know. I was shouting at the TV and I didn' t catch his name.
Ha ha ! It's hysterically funny, isn't it? Now watch this drive.

So, I can't say I'll be sorry to see the man go, not at all - but that doesn't necessarily mean that I think Obama will be the cure to all ills, so please don't go thinking that I hold any brief for the Democrats either. Though the fact Obama can string a sentence together suggests he may be nearer to the sort of candidate for the role that an electorate might hope for. And that, in essence is much of the reason why I'll be pleased when Bush is out - there seems to be very little in his record which suggests that he's fit to hold high office, and I think it's a hard-fought argument to suggest that he's the best man for the job, or the best representative of the USA. He's supposedly quite charming in person, and great at the people-stuff, but that's probably more appropriate for the mayor of a small town, or maybe the captain of a bowling league, if you want to play it safe.

None of this, I hasten to point out, should be construed as an attack on Americans per se - most USA-born folks I've ever met have been perfectly decent people, and their motivation and drive to better themselves (in whatever way they define that) is probably a lot stronger than that of the UK; M'colleague once pointed out the difference between the UK and the USA thus: "In the UK, if people see a Ferrari drive by, they'll sneer at the rich swine. In the USA, people see a Ferrari drive by and decide they'll work hard and buy one with the money they've earned". A simplification, yes, but it's certainly a difference that I've seen for myself, and it's an admirable one. My point is, the american people deserve a better figurehead than they've recently had. Whilst I had serious reservations about John McCain's running mate, the man himself seemed more plausible than Bush (when he spoke about war, he actually knew what he was talking about) - then again, even though he wasn't elected President, he seems to be otherwise employed, playing Colonel Tigh in Battlestar Galactica.

Lots of words here on this subject, but for those of you who prefer political issues in numerical form, I'd urge you to have a look at the summary of the Bush era created by the US-based Magazine Harpers, which can be seen here. I would politely draw your attention to the amount of time he spent on, or en route to, holiday.

Speaking of things on the newsstands, the picture accompanying this post is the 'variant cover' of the current issue of Amazing Spider-Man, featuring President-as-of-tomorrow Obama. There's been quite a bit of news coverage of this, for some reason, and when I went to my comic shop of choice the other day, I asked if they'd had much call for it. The chap behind the counter said yes, they had, but as it was a limited edition item, they'd run out almost immediately. "Quite a few people seemed to be buying it as a historic thing," he said, "to note the event". We agreed this was odd, as people could buy something a bit more immediately relevant, such as the newspaper that comes out that day. Or that week's Time magazine. Though probably not, I'd like to think, the plate.

This, I Think You'll Agree, Is Quite Startling

wingsuit base jumping from Ali on Vimeo.

Returning To The Well... To Refill The Bottle With Lightning?

I try not to be overly quick to react to announcements about forthcoming films and TV shows and the like, mainly because I've been wrong before (and which of us hasn't?).

Mind you, I was less slow to suggest that re-making the classic comedy series The Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin was probably a bad idea; the central performance by Leonard Rossiter would be hard to beat - which was pretty much shown by the follow-up series The Legacy Of Reginal Perrin, which lacked both Rossiter and a certain... indescribable something.

Anyway, I'm re-considering in a way, not because there's been an announcement that Martin Clunes is to star (though he seems a perfectly nice chap), but rather because the new version is to be written by Simon Nye. Nye's best known for Men Behaving Badly, but he's shown that he can do darker comedy with the far-less-seen How Do You Want Me?... and more importantly the new series is being written in conjunction with David Nobbs, the creator of Perrin.

This, of course, in no way guarantees that it won't be as much of a misfire as, say, Brighton Belles, but it may be all right. Am I hedging my bets? Probably - I love Perrin, and if it proves possible to do a renewed version that doesn't urinate all over the memory of the original, and says something about workplace or midlife boredom, then I'll un-narrow my sceptical eyes. If you're feeling more keen to see it before it actually hits the screen, mind, you can see it being filmed at Teddington Studios by clicking here.

All that said, though, I have no idea quite how one distinguishes between a 'remake' and an 'inspired update', as per the quote on the BBC site. Still, at least it's marginally more coherent than that ghastly non-phrase "re-imagining"...

Anyway, I've Always Maintained That The Timeliness Of Topical Material Can Compensate For A Lack Of Comedy

So, I presume he won't be singing the line "I'm a man, without conviction", any more?

Ah, don't frown, you just wish you'd said it first.

Trapped In The Office, As Our Kelly Almost Put It

Am trapped at work so won't be able to get to the BBC writersroom bash which starts in half an hour. Pah!

Still, if you go, hope you enjoy it - and report back, eh ?

BAFTA Film Nominations 2009

The nominations were announced just before 8am, and for those of us who couldn't make it down to Piccadilly for that time in the morning, the list is here.

A good showing for Slumdog Millionaire and Kate Winslet, and because he always sounds so darned affable on Adam and Joe's 6music show, I'm pleased for Garth Jennings to be nominated for the Carl Foreman award.

To my mind, a generally interesting list, even if it does suffer the perennial problem of containing films which aren't yet out in the UK (Frost/Nixon, The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button), thus rendering it a bit difficult to have an entirely certain opinion.. Not that lack of knowledge is usually an obstacle to me having an opinion.

And nor should it be for you; anyone have any strong feelings about any of the nominations? Do share.

It Also Contains A Leaflet Urging You To Subscribe - Because, As We All Know, After A Few Weeks, They Tend To Stop Materialising On The Shelves

I just spotted the first issue of this series in the newsagent today.

It’s one of those partworks which only tend to manifest at the start of the year, accompanied by TV ads telling you how it will "...week by week, build into a collection you - and your family - will treasure". Though I guess that on this occasion, it might actually be the sort of thing that you'll return to over time, no pun intended.

Mind you, it's not necessarily very good value - 2 episodes per DVD for a standard cost of £6.99 doesn't compare that well with buying the DVD boxes and a book, though as the first issue is at the introductory lure-you-in price £1.99, that's not so bad for the first two Eccleston episodes. Cheaper than iTunes, that's for sure.

If you want to look for it, it's hard to miss; the magazine-bit and DVD come mounted on a sizey piece of cardboard, and the magazine features David Tennant pointing a sonic screwdriver out at the viewer… actually, putting him on it which strikes me as a bit off (or at least a bit previous), rather as if the cover of the similar Little House On The Prairie collection didn't feature Michael Landon.

Belfast Isn't Just A Track By The Popular Beat Combo 'Orbital', You Know

Another BBC Writersroom roadshow has been announced, this time in Belfast. It's between 5:30 and 7:00pm on Thursday 29 January, at Studio One, Broadcasting House, Ormeau Avenue, Belfast.

As with previous roadshows, they don't want any old loonies just coming in off the street, so if you want to be one of the select loonies who's on the guest list, email your full name in the body of an email with the subject heading "Belfast Roadshow" to writersroom.events@bbc.co.uk.

Full details are available here, though the above pretty much covers it.

If you live nearby, why not go along and hand in your script in person? Given yesterday's rant about postal inefficiency, it sounds like a good way to avoid the vagaries of the postal service, and save money at the same time...

Always Rings Twice? It’s A Miracle If The Postman Rings The Once

It’s probably fortunate that I didn’t have a blog at the time, but a few years ago, the local sorting office decided to start telling lies about me. I’m sure of this, because various bits of post – including test items that I sent to see if my suspicions were true – were returned to sender with a sticker on saying ‘Gone Away’. It was annoying (especially as it was just before Christmas), and ultimately a serious problem, as the bank (not entirely unreasonably) saw the ‘returned Gone away’ on my statements and suspended my account. Thanks Royal Mail, I hope you enjoyed the money that you were paid in advance to perform a service.

Anyway, that eventually stopped – though not without a lot of hassle from my end – but in recent weeks it appears that the local postman has found a new way to not do his job properly but still take home the pay. A fortnight ago, m’wife was home and went to check the post at about 11am, and saw that there was a ‘Sorry You Were Out’ card on the mat. However, not only had there been no buzz on the buzzer (and she wouldn’t have missed it, ours is very loud), but the ‘attempted delivery’ was noted as having been at 11.45am. Being one who enjoys a touch of sarcasm, she immediately called the local sorting office and asked if our postman was the owner of a Tardis.

They made suitably apologetic noises, and confirmed that yes, the parcel was waiting to be picked up – given that we’re nowhere near the end of the route, it seems probable that the parcel never actually left the sorting office, and that the postman had decided to drop the card in without trying to deliver so he didn’t have to carry the parcel (not a large one, incidentally). I mentioned the above in passing at work the next day, and a colleague agreed this was likely to have been the case – he’d heard a card being dropped through the letterbox (without any knock or ring of the bell), and run down the road after the postman and asked for his item, to be told that er, um, actually the parcel’s back at the depot.

This morning, we received another Sorry You Were Out card – again, with no buzz at the door – and after Mrs Soanes and I had grrred and ground our teeth a bit, I Googled to see if other people had experienced the same level of non-service from Royal Mail. I expected a few matches, but there were literally dozens of people who’d received You Were Out cards with no attempt to establish if they were in fact out. Startling.

Those people, mind, were strangers, and so I’m keen and eager to know if you good people, who actually have names and some of whom I’ve had the good fortune to actually meet in person, have had similar experiences. Have you chased a Royal Mail employee down the road to be told they don’t actually have the item? Have you had cards dropped through without the doorbell being pressed or a knock at the door? Or are you a Royal Mail employee who could disabuse me of the notion that sometimes the post staff just write up the Sorry You Were Out cards in advance, and leave the items at the depot so they’ll have less to carry? Like the Jeremy Kyle research team, we want to hear from you (though you won’t get shouted at ).

Proof, If Proof Be Need Be, That Sunday Posts Are The Equivalent Of 'Friday Jobs'

Forget Aliens, this is surely the strangest change of tone for a sequel, ever.



I'm sorry.

Advert Spotted In A District Line Tube Carriage

One of the recently-announced atheist / humanist adverts - and which, I see, has already been criticised.

Mind you, given that the complaints come from Christian Voice, I think we can probably assume it's not necessarily a view shared by most reasonable religious folks.

You know the ones - they tend to have their beliefs and try to live by them, rather than verbally or literally attacking others for having differing ideas in their heads. Much like the founders of their religions asked them to, in fact.

Of Life Riley?

Does anyone know if the episode of new BBC sitcom Life of Riley which was on last night was, in fact, the first episode?

There were various jokes from the kids in the first five minutes or so about the dad's previous girlfriends, but it didn't seem to establish beforehand that Caroline Quentin's character was their new Mum or whatever. And they appeared to be moving into a new home, but I didn't know why... granted, I got a bit confused and wondered if I'd missed something vital, and didn't stick around much beyond the 8min stage, but was this information there and I missed it, or not?

I'm genuinely not having a go at the writer - she's a known name in comedy, with a pedigree going back to Spitting Image - so I'm more inclined to think that, for some reason, the BBC might have decided to play ep2 instead of a scene-setting opening episode. Maybe it was just me not paying attention, but if anyone can put me stright, I'm sincerely open to correction on this.

In Which I Try To Justify My Nerdish Level Of Knowledge About One Topic By Pretending I'm Really Talking A Broader Issue

There are many differences between TV in the UK and USA. The number of episodes in a series (often 6 in the UK, and more like 24 in the USA), the number of writers working on a show (the idea of the Writers' Room, common in the USA, is a positive rarity in the UK, though it's not unknown), and the tendency of American shows to have episodes comprised of clips from previous weeks (if not years), known as 'clip shows', are just a few examples.

A show going 'on hiatus' in the USA is another. Basically, this means that for whatever reason, the network or channel decides to stop showing a programme before the end of its projected run. It does happen, after a fashion, here in Blighty, but rather than the show just vanishing from the schedules, it tends to suddenly be re-located to some far-flung post-midnight slot; my first personal recollection of this happening was with the comedy Kinvig, though whether it's because my 10-year-old self recognised the scripting ability of Nigel 'Quatermass' Kneale, or that I found something confusingly interesting about the sight of Prunella Gee in a number of materially-challenged costumes, is open to debate.

Anyway, US shows which go on hiatus tend to vanish from the schedules and not come back, or if there's a concerted viewer campaign, they may return. I don't know of any notable examples of a show going on hiatus and then coming back and running for a prolonged period (anyone? Seinfeld started off with low ratings but then went on to enormous success, but I think that was more slow and steady than a case of being reprieved, though I could be wrong) - what usually seems to happen is that a show comes back, runs for a few more episodes in order to complete the series (or 'season'), and then that's yer lot. I think that's pretty much what happened to Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip recently.

Further off in the mists of history - and you'll be relieved to know that I'm finally getting to my point here - the same thing happened with the TV show Twin Peaks. I've mentioned before that I adore this show, and have done since it first aired in the UK during my college years, when m'colleague and I used to follow it. I think it's a terrific show (though not without its flaws, by any means) to this day, and I genuinely feel one could make a pretty strong argument that it paved the way for a lot of solid US Drama that's followed it, particularly on the non-cable channels; I think it's hard to imagine The X-Files or The West Wing having been made without TP having proven that there was an audience for a drama with strong serial elements, particularly in an era when video allowed for repeated viewing or catch-up.

Anyway, when Twin Peaks started, it proved an enormously successful show, but during the second series, ratings in the USA fell off quite dramatically, and the network put it on hiatus, six episodes short of completing the series. A letter-writing campaign ensued, which was successful, and Twin Peaks returned for six more episodes, completing its second (and, even I would freely admit, very patchy) series. And then, having lived a surprisingly long time following the last rites of having been put on hiatus, it was announced that Twin Peaks, as a TV series, was finished (though a prequel film was released a year or so later).

In the UK, we were unaware of the hiatus, as the show was broadcast on BBC2 (on Tuesday nights at 9pm, I seem to recall, with late-night repeats on Saturday on the same channel), several months after the episodes had been shown in the USA. In the USA, though, the episode which aired post-hiatus (which is to say, the first of the final six episodes made) was being shown after a lengthy-ish gap in the series, and understandably, the network was concerned that, in order to try and keep or build their audience, they would need some kind of recap.

So, a brief rundown of the events so far was put at the front of episode 24. In the UK, there was only the usual week between episodes, so no lengthy 'Previously On Twin Peaks' intro, with a new voiceover from the lead character, was shown. Which means that there was 2'34" of Twin Peaks footage which wasn't ever shown on UK TV (and no, I'm not going to get into the whole issue of the European Ending versus the Pilot Episode ending, or the editing of Truman's fight with Jones, here; one day I'll probably get round to writing a whole slew of posts about TP and what I love about it, and what makes me shake my head indulgently, but not today).

That lengthy parenthesis rather spoiled my intention with that sentence, so let's pretend I didn't splice a bunch of bracketed words into that paragraph, and go again: Which means that there was 2'34" of Twin Peaks footage which wasn't ever shown on UK TV … but it's now available to view here.

A long and rambling semi-essay to introduce a link there, I know… and now, as I click 'POST', I cross the fingers of my non-mouse hand and hope that, to make the above worth it, the link to the clip actually works…

My Interest Lies In Cycle Paths, Not Psychopaths

For those of you who aren't so keen on my writing-related posts, you'll be pleased to know this is on a different topic, and instead of holding forth with my usual arrogance and self-confidence, I'm asking a couple of questions…

Regular (that is, 'long-suffering') readers - or those of you who've read my profile - may recall that I like to do a bit of running, but this year I'm looking to add to that, whilst simultaneously diminishing my waistline, by having a go at a Duathlon. I know a Triathlon's the more famous event (and it seems the London Triathlon is pretty famous internationally), but until I've done something about the measurement around my equator, I don't think that humanity should be subject to the sight of me in a wetsuit. So, it's running plus cycling in 2009.

It's the addition of cycling which is the unknown and uncertain area for me, though, as I haven't been the owner of a bike for at least a decade, and I'm pretty certain that technology will have advanced quite a bit bike-wise in that period. So, if any of you can advise me on the type or model I should be looking into, I'd be really grateful. Whatever model I buy needs to be as light as possible, but also sturdy, as the duathlon involves run-cycle-run, and so the bike'll be chucked about a fair bit (especially when I dump it and get back to the second bout of running). And if I can use it for everyday, non-sport purposes, that'd be good too (though I have some sizable reservations about cycling in London, as you might imagine).

Anyway, if you can recommend a suitable model or a firm who might be able to help me sort myself out with some wheels, I'd appreciate it - and if any of you have done a Triathlon or Duathlon and want to try to dissuade me from doing one, or to give advice on how to do so and not end up knackered or dead*, please leave a comment or e-mail me at twowheelsgood[at]johnsoanes.co.uk.

Oop, almost forgot - in terms of size and cost, I need something that'll be all right for my moderately lengthy legs (about 35"), and which costs less than £fourdigits - and it has to be available in black.

Any pointers gratefully received - thanks!

*If I wind up dead as a result of some silly physicality such as a duathlon or climbing a mountain, I think it's fair to say, m'wife will kill me.

BBC Writersroom - Coming To A Town Near Me!

... which is my typically inane way of saying that the BBC Writersroom are holding one of their Roadshows in London.

It's next week - Thursday 15 January, from 5:30pm to 7pm, and it's at the Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Square. As with all the swankiest of events, your name has to be on the guest list, which means e-mailing your name, with the subject heading "London Roadshow" to writersroom.events@bbc.co.uk.

That pretty much covers it, but full details are available here.

I don't intend to hand any of my work in to the BBC folks in person at the event (as it's possible to do), but I've applied to attend - anyone else going? Let me know if you are, it'd be good to say hello to some fellow scribblers (or, as the case may be, typers).

No, It’s Not Paypal - This Is Something That Could Help You Earn Money (Though It's Probably Pronounced Much The Same)

I've written before about my love of notebooks, and how insanely useful they can be when writing, but even I would admit there are some occasions when pen and paper aren't quite the right tool for the job.

One such time, I find, is when I'm trying to do something 'bigger than writing notes' - by which I mean trying to create a representation of character relationships, a timeline, a structure plan, breaking a story, creating a 'beat sheet', or what have you; the sort of times I need to be able to move my notes around as if they're tiles on a Scrabble board.

The professional way to do this is, of course, to use a wipeboard, or a big noticeboard and post-it notes or postcards, but that's not always possible when you're not at home or you're on a train or something like that.

To this end, I've recently been making pretty productive use of Papel, a free bit of software which allows you, to some extent, to create little notes to yourself, and save them all as part of a bigger 'project' file. I've so far used it as a repository for a bundle of notes on a novel and a TV feature, both of which I'm still shaping up, and it felt useful to get the various disparate scribbles in one place on the laptop. If nothing else, getting it all on the screen at one time showed me how much material I currently have, and whether I'm lacking beats in the second act or whatever.

Anyway, I've only been tinkering with it for a couple of days, but I've found it quite useful - if nothing else, it means that the various scribbled notes I've made to myself are rendered legible, which can only count as progress. As I say, it's free to download (though I'm not sure if non-Windows users will be able to run it), and whilst I'm not going to pretend it'll revolutionise your writing methods, it might be worth a look, to see if you find it useful.

To Semi-Paraphrase Goldfinger: Two Writers Saying It Could Be Chalked Up To Coincidence, But Three? One Should Perhaps Pay Attention.

In chronological order, three quotes from writers of note which I've recently come across:

"The artist should never try to be popular. Rather the public should be more artistic."
- Oscar Wilde

"Don't give people what they want, give them what they need. What they want is for Sam and Diane to get together. Don't give it to them."
- Joss Whedon

"Creating something is not a democracy. The people have no say. The artist does. It doesn't matter what the people witter on about; they and their response come after. They're not there for the creation."
- Russell T Davies

Is the underlying theme there, I wonder, the mandate from my betters I need to become even more of a puffed-up self-confident fool? Let's hope not, or I'll become even more unbearable.

Still, something to think about there, perhaps...

New Who?

Who knew?

I wasn't guessing, but did any of you make money by wagering on this?

And The Unsurprising Moral Of The Story Is : You Actually Have To Care About The Story And Characters

Browsing through my new-ish copy of Writer's Market the other day (no, I really was), I noticed that Mills and Boon publish 600 of their romance-oriented titles every year. That, a quick calculation reveals, is about 12 books every week - which kind of surprised me; I knew they published a lot of books, but almost two a day? Crikey.

Anyway, I idly started thinking about submitting something to them, and wondering if any of the stories knocking around the attic of my mind might be dusted off and polished to a Mills and Boon-y shine. Of course, in the way the universe has of making events converge, last night on BBC4 there was a programme called How To Write A Mills and Boon - the BBC iPlayer link is here.

It's worth a watch - regardless of whether you're thinking of sending stuff to them - as the novelist Stella Duffy has a go at writing a book for them, and despite having had about a dozen novels published, she finds that it's not actually as easy as you might think; like writing for comics or soap operas, it shouldn't be looked on as something that's easy or somehow beneath one's dignity. Writing within any confines is, after all, a challenge.

I Really Thought I Was Paying For Nudity

Intending to start this year feeling like I was actually steering the ship rather than being thrown about by events, I just had a look at my bank details online, to make sure I have some kind of idea how much or how little money is in my account.

And then I spotted what looked like an odd transaction - a direct debit against my account with the reference "NUD COLLECTIONS AC".

Nude collections? I don't remember having made any kind of payment like that... and then I realised it was actually an insurance payment to Norwich Union.

No wonder they're changing their name...

Welcome To 2009. Would You Like A Cup Of Tea?

Well then, another year gone, and a new one started. Oh 2008, we hardly knew ye.

I'll spare you a full run-down of which of my semi-resolutions I fulfilled, though paradoxically I got a whole load of things which weren't on my list done (and I mean writing stuff, not things like, say, getting married). Ah well.

But rather than pick over the bones of 2008, I shall instead redouble my efforts - by this time next year (clenches fist, raises it to a thundering sky), YOU ALL SHALL KNOW MY NAME!

(For nice reasons, I mean, nothing bad.)

But, to each and every one of you, a very happy 2009, and may the year bring you everything you could ask for - as well as a few surprises.

Oooh, The Original! I'm Fed Up With Getting The Second Pressing...

Gianni is probably spinning in his grave.

Er, I mean graev.

Look, I know it's pedantry, but when the name of the item is on the picture that's the centre-piece of your poster, I think it looks a bit shoddy to get the name wrong. You only have to look about an inch downwards to check it. I mean, come on...

Huh? As Opposed To Literature Soaps Or Cola Drinks?

Sainsburys going for the Nobel Prize For Signage there, then.

I Was In Receipt, But I Hope They Kept The Receipt

Well, after all my recent posts about other people being unclear about gifts they wanted for Christmas, karma has come to bite me on the arse, and the pictures here show a DVD and book which I received yesterday.

Not the ones I had in mind, I have to say.

All right, lesson learned.

And A Very Merry Christmas To All Of You

If you're reading this shortly after I post it, you really ought to go to bed - Santa doesn't come if you're still awake.

That consideration aside, I hope you have a good day, and that you spend it with people who you want to be with, and that you have fun.

I'm reliably informed that the actual translation of the latin phrase "et in terra pax hominibus, bonae voluntatis", because it involves the genetive case, actually means "Peace on earth to men of good will", but I think we can stretch to the usual mistranslation, and so I wish a whole bunch of high quality will (and not in the Nietzschean sense) to each and every one of you.

As Derek Batey used to say, be nice to each other.

Yes, Yes, The Lesson Here Is Not To Leave Your Present-Wrapping Until The Last Minute, But That Doesn't Help Me Right Now

I thought that my previous problem with mixed-up gifts might get me in trouble, but all my notebook says for the presents for my sister and my niece alike is 'Circus CD'.

The items are on the table before me, and they need wrapping in the next few minutes. Looks like I'd better flip a coin...

I Guess The Opposite of Update Would Be Downtime

Over the last couple of weeks, a number of people I know have started using Twitter.

If you're not familiar with it, it's arguably best described as a 'microblogging' site, where people post updates in very brief terms - about the length of a text message (which I think is probably how much of the updating is done), akin to the personal status thing in (hack, spit) Facebook.

Messrs Peel and Colgan are using it, though I doubt I'll be joining in - as regular readers will have realised by now, the idea of me being able to express things in the bare minimum of characters is extremely unlikely.

Still, when it comes to twittering, I think we'd all have to agree that this chap may well be the current champion. Cripes.

I Don't Mean To Be Rude, But: I Once Saw A Man Openly Reading A Hardcore Pornographic Magazine On The District Line. Clearly, This Is Far Worse

On the tube on the way home from finishing off my Christmas shopping the other night, I noticed that the woman sitting next to me was reading a book - which is perfectly reasonable - but strangely, she was keeping it inside her bag as she did so... as you can see from the craftily taken picture here.

Having seen a man reading an adult art pamphlet (as referred to in the title of this post) on the tube before, and also a woman reading a 'ladies erotica novel' about bondage and spanking without any such sense of subterfuge, I was keen and eager to know what it was that she was trying to read without letting anyone know what it was.

She turned a page, I peered at the title at the top of it, and it turned out to be this.

Shocking, I think you'll agree.

(If nothing else, I expect the racy words used in this post to help bring in new readers via Google search.)

And, Let's Face It, Having The Word 'Standard' In The Name Is Asking For Trouble

Remember how, the other day , I suggested that the interplay between fiction and reality goes in both directions?

Well, here's a newspaper hoarding from Thursday.

Given that the next line in the report wasn't 'Time Vortex Undoes All Of History', I think one might politely (or less politely) suggest that the paper was confusing the actor with the role he plays.

(Though I guess they might have been referring to concerns that David T's health might endanger the filming of episodes, but I prefer to take the less charitable interpretation where the ES is concerned. It's a stablemate of the Daily Mail, after all.)

Service Update

I'm sure you're worrying about it, so let me just put your minds at rest, my loves - here at John Soanes, "normal service" (by which I mean 'at least as many updates as there are working days in the week') will be maintained over the Christmas and New Year period.

So, that news means literally dozens of people will be able to sleep well at night, then.

From Hull

Once again, the good people from the BBC Writersroom are holding a roadshow - this time in Hull on Wednesday 7 January 2009.

As with all the finest gatherings, you need to be on the list to get in, but it's free to attend - full details of the how, when and where can be found here.

And, though no details are given, a roadshow session in London is promised for 2009. I'm very unlikely to attend the Hull event, but London... well, that's my manor, innit?

I Couldn't Find The UK Version Of The De Niro Film Poster, But It's The Same In Language Terms

Sometimes in life we may face awkward questions, but surely that doesn't mean that we should be inherently afraid of question marks? For some reason people seem a bit keen to remove them from the titles of various media. as shown above.

Anyone have any idea why this is ?

Er, I mean, "anyone have any idea why this is"...

Ah, But Is It Art?

Antony Gormley's Angel Of The North, and Walt Disney's Condorman.

Despite the obvious similarities, only one of them is considered to be a work of art.

Can you guess which, and why? Answer using your own words as far as possible. (25 marks)

As I Know He Reads The Blog, I'd Like To Acknowledge That My Brother - Though He's Not Imaginary Like Donald Kaufman - Also Does His Job Jolly Well

There's a poll currently running on the Writers' Guild Blog : "Do you believe in writers' block?"

The two answers given are 'Yes, it's all too real', and 'No, it's just an excuse to procrastinate', and if you want to, I think you can still vote, so if you feel strongly either way and want to make your opinion known, follow the above link and click away.

I've been mulling it over a bit, partly because of the question asked by the WGGB, partly because of this post by Andrew 'They Call Me Mister' Tibbs, though mainly because I've recently rewatched Adaptation, a good film which is certainly worth seeing (if you haven't already done so).

As you may well know, the film tells the story of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman's struggle to adapt the book The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean into a screenplay, and interweaves the tale of the book itself with his writing struggles (with something that certainly looks like writer's block), to the point where the film is ultimately more about that than the content of Orlean's book (though that just be me preferring the tale of the storyteller than the flora-seller). In the film, Kaufman stares hopelessly at the blank page in his typewriter, wrestling with both problems of story and his own self-worth (made all the more prominent by comparison with his [imaginary] twin Donald, who has enormous success with his own more obviously populist script).

It reminded me rather of the post on Andrew's blog, which refers to the recent Charlie Brooker programme, wherein a number of writers talked about the importance of actually getting down to writing - Tony Jordan puts it most straightforwardly when he says 'A writer writes - the clue is in the name' - and quite a few of them talked about how they'd write without necessarily knowing where they were going with the story. Andrew wrote about how the opposite of this can be to want to plot everything down to the smallest detail, and how that can lead to constant procrastination from the act of getting words down on the page - which is part of Kaufman's problem in Adaptation.

I'm inconsistent in whether I plan things like mad or just dive into a story (though I invariably like to have an end in mind, lest I should go on writing for ever), although one thing I've realised is that it's better if I keep my story ideas to myself; not for fear of plagiarism, but for the more mundane reason that if I get all giddy and intoxicated with the tale and end up blurting it out (usually in a half-baked form), that tends to dilute the need to write it down because - even on that pathetic level - part of me feels I've told the story. God only knows how I reconcile that with pitching and query letters, but I tend to make sure my first draft is finished before I get to that stage.

Anyway, I don't really have an opinion as to whether Writers' Block is real, though in a strange way I suspect that's because I've rarely been in a position where my failure to words on paper has been like a kick to my sense of identity. I've only occasionally been called upon to write under that kind of pressure (well, outside of work, where the stuff I write about is usually non-fiction, though some might disagree). If I was a paid writer, I can well see that finding the well of inspiration had run dry would be akin to a bout of mental impotence - you want to do it, you know you can do it, but the more you think about it, the less likely it is to happen.

I wish I was more advanced in my writing career than I actually am - and I'm well aware that I'm the only one, ultimately, who can do anything about that - but in a way it does mean that the pressure is lower; by analogy, if I can't be bothered to go out for a run (as has been the case more often than not since the clocks went back, and I have the waistline to prove it), I don't have a coach or team who I'm letting down, and who'll shout at me if I jeopardise my personal advancement, but if you're a writer by trade, there are a lot of people who you could feel you're letting down (as well as yourself). I can see why it could be a more pernicious situation if you feel you just can't find it within you to write (or indeed run), so I wouldn't want to say it's not real just because I (fortunately) haven't experienced it.

The main thing that keeps me from writing as much as I should, or should like to, is the tiresome and predictable issue of, you guessed it, time; again, I'm aware that I could squeeze in more writing and less loafing, and so for me at present this is a bigger challenge than Writers' Block, though of course that may change in the future.

So, in summary, my concerns: Writers' Block? Not yet. Writer's Clock? You bet.

Outbreak III - The Virus Takes London

(Image nicked from Modern Humorist - not entirely germane, but I couldn't resist sharing.)

I'm almost ashamed to tell you this, but... well, I picked up a virus over the weekend.

No, it's not that kind of story - and my wife knows all about it - but it was kind of embarrassing. I downloaded a trial copy of WinRAR from a normally reputable source, but it turned out that it was a 'cracked copy' into which someone had inserted some nefarious code.

As a result I got a silly message popping up on my laptop every few minutes, and every time I tried to log on to the interweb I got redirected to some spurious-looking site which offered to sell me a security fix (for the problem it had caused). Tch.

Anyway, I resolved it - if you also suffer the 'intervalhehe' virus, you can sort it out by following Andy Greenwood's instructions here - but I was concerned for a bit that all the scripts on my computer were in danger, a prospect I was far from keen on.

So kids, learn from my mistake - if you're downloading files from the internet, make sure it's from a source you know you can trust!

Has Vince Vaughn Become The New Tim Allen?

Just, y'know, a thought.

But You Don't Really Care For Music, Do Ya?

The latest series of TV show The X-Factor has just come to an end, and I have to admit to mixed feelings about the choice of song for the 'winner's single'.

I think Hallelujah is a genuinely beautiful song, and given that its creator, Leonard Cohen, had his retirement fund nicked by his (then) manager, it's a good thing that he'll benefit from the royalties, but... well, I'm pretty sure that it'll be so heavily played in the next few weeks that it'll end up like 'that Bryan Adams Robin Hood song'.

To be fair, the rendition of it by the winner, Alexandra, isn't bad at all (and is certainly better than the version by the runners-up), but I think my favoured performance remains that by KD Lang, which you can see and hear here.

Anyway, I like the irony of the third line of the song (quoted above) in a song performed by the winner of X-Factor...

Why Should We Believe Your Stance This Time, Eh ?

In 1977, you say you're NOT; in 1995, you say you ARE.

Are you just going to change your mind again in 2013, Leonard?

And Now, To Provide A Counterpoint To The More Serious Tone Of The Preceding Posts, Here's A Picture Of A Lovely Little Kitten

Oh dear.

Mind You, I Did Get A New Mousemat, So I Guess It Wasn't All Bad

As I may or may not have mentioned before, I used to work for a publisher, in their Customer Services team. It was a pretty good job, and I was pretty good at it.

It got more difficult shortly after I started, though, as they introduced a new 'order fulfillment system', which had a minor, niggling, teeny flaw - it was an active obstruction to getting books to customers. It tested my customer placating skills, I can tell you, and those of my colleagues alike - and one of those colleagues was my good friend Toby.

One day, Toby and I were in the kitchen at work, chatting.
"You watch," he said, "at times like this - when things are utterly chaotic - people tend to focus on the small things, and try to control them."
"Is that because they're the only things they can control?" I asked.
"Exactly," he said, and smiled knowingly.

A couple of days later, the manager of our department gathered everyone round. We hoped that he might be able to tell us that the (non)fulfillment system was being sorted out or replaced, but no: he smiled, and proudly told us they had new company mousemats for everyone.

Sigh.

Anyway, given that the general mood of the world is that an economic nightmare is inescapably descending on us all, and that it appears nothing is certain any more, I can't help but wonder if this is why people seem a bit too keen to complain about things on TV; a way of taking back control, as it were. Ross and Brand,a two-year-old episode of Mock The Week, and now there have been complaints about an advertisement for the children's charity Barnardo's, and it's been referred to the Advertising Standards Authority.

I've seen the advert a number of times (and I think it's viewable here), and I agree that it contains unsettling and upsetting material. But that's not what offends me - far more offensive to any 'ordinary decent person', surely, is the fact that in a supposedly civilised country, we even need charities such as Barnardo's or Save The Children or the NSPCC?

Now, I'm all offended and upset by the idea that people might want to complain about - if not shoot - the messenger. Who do I get to call and register my complaint?

Come Into The Lounge And Bring Your Backpack, I'm Going To Ramble About TV

There's an article about the Shannon Matthews trial on the Guardian website which I think makes for very interesting reading, and though it's quite lengthy, I urge you to have a look at it. Go on, I'll wait here…

It triggered two thoughts in my mind, the first of which is that it's perhaps revealing that the liberal Guardian should effectively be implying that the existence of a 'state support framework' can lead to some people becoming so reliant on it that they effectively become shielded from taking responsibility for their own actions. I can understand this, though - in a perhaps silly comparison, I think you can see this in any workplace or shared home, where some people don't wash up their mugs or whatever because they're so used to someone else tutting and doing it for them; on a wider level, I'm sure that there are people for whom more than mere crockery is involved, and who make a certain number of major decisions about their life - or don't make the decisions at all - on the basis that someone will probably be there to catch them if they fall. Not so much a Nanny State as a substitute Mummy state in some cases, I fear. Anyway, that's the social aspect of my thinking on it.

The other thought that it stirred was related to the effects of the media, and more particularly of the responsibilities of those involved, especially writers. The sentence in the article which triggered this was

"Her body language was borrowed from the daytime talk shows she rarely missed. She carried herself in court just as she would have done had she been on Jeremy Kyle's stage with a caption underneath her reading 'FIVE MEN LEFT ME WITH THEIR KIDS'."

Now, I don't know if this is entirely accurate in the case in question - it's more editorialising than reportage - though I think lurking behind it is a notion which has occurred to me more than once; the idea that programmes such as The Jeremy Kyle Show, by their presentation of the sensational as everyday, can give the impression that they're telling the viewer that "this is the way the world is".

If you watched shows like this all day (and even with the limited number of TV channels I have access to, it seems pretty possible to do so, with all the Trishas and Jezzas and Montels and Rickis and Sally Jesses circulating on the schedules), you could easily get the idea that the best way to deal with disagreement is to shout at each other, and that the world is awash with self-serving folks whose only ambition is to obtain money and fame and have as much sex with as many people as possible without any concern for the consequences (anyway, if there's a kid involved, then you can always have a DNA Test special to drag their 'deadbeat dad' into the spotlight).

There are quite a few people in the world who are like this, sure, but I'd like to think they're not in the majority - but the prevalence of them on TV could easily lead to the impression that this is how 'everyone else behaves'. And if everyone else is just going to try to screw you over (in whatever sense), what's the point in you trying to be honest, or loyal, or whatever? "If you can't beat 'em", and all that.

I'm simplifying, sure, but I think there is a bleed between items portrayed in the media and reality; not only within the news and factual programmes where you can see items become very important very quickly only to drop off the agenda with equally startling speed (remember how SARS was going to kill everyone?), but also in fictional programmes and films. On this side of the screen and in the streets, it's not tricky to spot people wearing Matrix-style coats, and large numbers of people appear to believe that they're in a music video at any given time, and indeed I think this relates to the way people interact as well - soap operas all too often portray arguing and shouting and throwing things as the only way to resolve disagreements, and fidelity as an option, and so on, and I do wonder how often people look at these portrayals of the world and this yes, that's how the world is.

I'm not saying that TV programmes shouldn't present the world in this way - firstly, I wouldn't presume to say what should and shouldn't be done, and secondly I'm well aware that most of these elements are inserted into storylines to create conflict and drama (though the two should not be seen, as all too often seems to be the case, as being synonymous) - but I do wonder if this created world of never-ending conflict and rowing both presents an overly negative depiction of an ostensibly real world, and also means that dramas are constantly needing to up the ante to make things seem ever more dramatic; EastEnders famously had a huge ratings success with the Den-Angie marriage breakup story, which consisted of human-level actions (rows, presentation of divorce papers) played out in fiery language and with the occasional 'dramatic' scene (Angie's attempted suicide), but now the major storylines tend to involve more visibly dramatic events such as murder (Emmerdale's Tom King storyline, which I think is still unresolved after over a year), a man sleeping with his son's wife and being buried alive by his wife by way of revenge (EastEnders), and a character being mown down by a driver hired by a jealous love rival (Coronation Street).

It's fairly easy to poke fun at the glossy US soaps of the 1980s such as Dynasty, which had season cliffhangers featuring a wedding where terrorists broke in and shot (apparently) everyone, or where an alien spacecraft abducted one of the cast (okay, that was in the spin-off, but you know what I mean), and even to mock more recent soaps such as Passions or Night And Day for being 'unrealistic' and straying into the realms of the un-tetheredly fictional, but I think that you don't have to look at the more extreme cases before you can argue that the storylines in current 'reality-based' drama could be more in line with the lives people actually lead.

If - as often seems to be the case in soaps or 'continuing drama' - you want to tell a serious story which actually informs the viewer about (to take recentish examples) being the parent of a child with Down's Syndrome, or dealing with being HIV-Positive, then that's going to be all the more powerful if it takes place in a locale that has some resonance with the viewer.

Last night's episode of EastEnders focussed on their storyline about child molestation within a family unit, and whilst I think it was really quite well-written (with the exception of one line about being 'used and abused', which troubled me as I couldn't decide if it was in-character cliché for Bianca or just too 'on the nose'), I feel it's more plausible if this sort of storyline doesn't take place in a street where people bury their spouses alive or every third character has ties to the London Gangland (who, on the basis of recent episodes of Emmerdale, are opening branches - or at least nightclubs - around the country).

I'm not pretending to have any kind of well-formed solution to offer here, and I certainly wouldn't want to be prescriptive about what can and can't be put into fiction or media (other than to say "anything and everything"), and I'm sure I'm not saying anything new, but the above notions are currently churning round my mind like socks in a tumble dryer; I guess I'm perhaps driving vaguely towards the idea that writers may have 'reponsibilities to the audience' in some way, or perhaps that it's simply important for stories to have a certain consistency of theme and tone, but as I seem to have lost myself rather in the tangle of these notions, in lieu of some neat conclusion, I'll instead ask: what do you think?

Cover Story

Here then, the covers of the latest copies of two similarly-themed magazines: the Fortean Times (issue 243, running since the 1970s), and Paranormal magazine (issue 32, founded... er, I dunno, but I'm guessing it's more recently).

Would I be out of line to suggest the similarity of design might not be an accident?

(Full disclosure: I've written for the FT before, but still...)

Sometimes I Put Books Together On My Bookcase To See If They'll Start Fighting

My money's on BTB, to be honest.

They Took The Words Right Out Of My Keyboard

In the light of the current trend for attacking the BBC, I was intending to write a strongly worded post on this topic, but it seems that the Writers' Guild of GB has rather beaten me to it.

I urge you to read their recent Response To Ofcom's Second Public Service Broadcasting Review - here's the final paragraph, which I particularly liked:

"Manufacturing industry has been decimated; shipbuilding, mining and
steelmaking have disappeared; construction is grinding to a halt; the railways are in chaos; the financial services industry has an uncertain future, or perhaps no future. Public service broadcasting – and in particular the BBC – is one of the last areas in which we can truly be said to lead the world. Today it is at risk as never before. If we allow public service broadcasting to collapse, the only activity left in which Britain excels will be in waging foreign wars."

...Nicely put, I feel.

No, Not The One from Sesame Street Who Lives In A Dustbin

In case the link I provided to the screenplay for The Dark Knight wasn't to your tastes, or it merely made you want to see more scripts, answer me this: how would you feel about access to PDFs of the scripts for the films fighting for the Oscar for Best Original Sceenplay and Best Adapted Screenplay?

You'd like to see them, you say?

Why then, clicken sie hier, meine kleine leser, and once again wander backstage at the magic show, and get a few insights into how it's done.

Writers On TV, Talking About Writing For TV

You might have seen it last night, but if not, I can heartily recommend the latest edition (3/6) of Charlie Brooker's Screen Burn, doing the rounds on BBC Four.

It's an extra-length episode, and instead of his usual incisive (and frequently rightly abusive) commentary on TV and media, Mr B chats to a number of high-profile writers, specifically:

- Russell T Davies
- Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong
- Tony Jordan
- Paul Abbott
- Graham Linehan

So, I think you'd agree, people who are worth listening to when it comes to the business of writing. They talk about ideas, dialogue, characters, and give a few bits of advice.

If you missed it last night, fret not! Tis repeated on BBC Four at the following times:
Friday 5 December, 11.45pm - 12.35am
Sunday 7 December, 11.30pm - 12.20am

And if you're all tech-knowledgy and have access to the BBC iPlayer, you can probably access it right now (if you inferred that I haven't installed iPlayer yet, you're quite right).

Definitely worth a watch if you have any kind of interest in writing for TV - or in writing generally, really.

Though We Should Never Forget That Mr Sheen Also Portrayed Greg Stillson In The 'Dead Zone' Film, Who Also Became President...

I try to avoid writing about dreams I've had on the blog, because… well, mainly because it's usually rather dull hearing about other people's dreams.

I invariably find that my dreams are just a tangle of events and fleeting thoughts from the day, as the mind winds down and shuffles its papers like a newsreader about to knock off for the day, but I thought I'd share the following. If nothing else, it'll give you an indication of the shape of the inside of my head, as unhealthy as it might be.

So: I dreamt that I was attending a writers' meeting for the TV show The West Wing, where we were all called on to pitch storyline ideas for the forthcoming season. Of course, since I have no idea what the majority of the writing staff look like, the other writers and the showrunners were depicted by members of the cast - as the head of things, Aaron Sorkin was played by Martin Sheen, and so on.

Adding to the confusion is the fact that although I think it's one of best-written shows in recent years, because Channel 4 burned off their episodes of TWW in all manner of strange places (different channels) and times (post-midnight at one stage, 8pm at another), I haven't actually seen it beyond the stage when John Goodman comes along. So the storylines I was pitching were all being put forward without any certainty as to whether they might already have been done - though as I was also aware that Mr Sheen, like Mr Sorkin, was not in the boss-chair towards the end of things, it was as if I was pitching at some point in the show's past.

Anyway, I woke up, and was amused by the fact that I had, in the dream, been pitching pretty good ideas at a moment's notice (I suggested one storyline for Will Bailey which had Joshua Malina nodding as if to say he understood), bewildered at the way that my mind had chosen to depict behind-the-scenes folks with on-set equivalents, and reminded how I'd promised myself that, once I've completed the Christmas shopping this year, I was planning on buying myself the West Wing DVD boxset by way of reward.

And then, less than an hour later, I opened a magazine and saw an advert saying the boxset is now 75% in certain locations.

All right, Mr Subconscious, I get the message. No need to hammer it home.