lurkingricardo

My Mum and Arthur Ransome

Sun, 02 Jul 2006 22:53:06 GMT

Each night, sometime between 7.30 and 8.30, I get his milk ready and go and collect Robbie (now two) from J and then we will sit on the sofa in the bedroom, he will drink his milk, and then we will lie down together until he goes to sleep. This last step can take anything between 90 seconds and an hour, depending on how tired he's feeling and what sort of a day he's had. He's very good, he usually just lies there quietly muttering to me about this and that and occasionally chuckling when I tell him that it's time for sleep now. Often to encourage him I try and pretend to be asleep myself, and so I lie there in the dark with my eyes shut, mentally turning over bits and pieces of things, usually to no great effect. Not that tonight is really an exception, but I did end up thinking about a) My Mum, and b) Arthur Ransome, and I thought it might make an OK LJ entry.

My starting point was simply how much I've always looked forward to the reading part of parenting. Not to put the little chap under too much pressure, but I shall be crushed - crushed - if he doesn't like reading. (I know of one boy I grew up, very nice guy, really great parents, pretty bright, who told me when he was about 16 that he didn't think he'd ever read a book for pleasure. I was appalled then and now. I gave him a copy of Marathon Man by William Goldman and said it was impossible not to enjoy it, but he didn't read it.)

And yet what you can't/mustn't do, I think, is ram reading down their throats. The thing is to plant seeds, and then encourage those seeds as best you can. My mum was very good at this, and I regret never telling her what a great job she did and how grateful I am. My childhood sometimes feels like a journey between landmark books, in nearly every case selected by her, sometimes after considered discussion with other family friends as to "what Richard might like next".

Around 1975, I think, we'd been in Gibraltar two years and we undertook the first of our five overland trips back home over the summer. (Yikes, that's not clear at all, is it? Try this: we were in Gibraltar for ten years, and every other summer from the second year onwards we would drive back to the UK through Spain and France, stay in the UK a few weeks, then drive back, thus avoiding the worst of the summer heat. So, by my reckoning, we did trips in 75, 77, 79, 81 and finally, in 1983, when we left for good. My boyhood in Gib will be another LJ entry at some point, I'm sure.) We did this first trip in a brown dormobile (spelling?) which had a couple of bookcases in the backdoor. My mum bought some books for the journey, and had obviously mentally flagged that this might be a good time for Richard to start reading on his own (I would have been seven). The book she'd picked out for me was a Secret Seven by Enid Blyton, I can't remember the exact title but I think it was the fifth or sixth of the series and it involved a ruse whereby one of them pretended to be a Guy Fawkes dummy. I can still see the cover in my mind's eye now.

Sadly I can't remember the exact circumstances in which I picked up this mighty volume and made my way through it, but suffice to say that on the return trip from the UK I had purchased, with Mum's help I'm sure, at least half a dozen other volumes in the series. And I was off, and I've never really stopped since, though ironically I've read waaaay less since Robbie was born because suddenly your spare time just disappears.

Now, nitpickers may sigh a little at the fact that it was Ms Blyton and yes, she's not the greatest, but she told a good yarn as far as seven year-old Ricardo was concerned and I duly moved on over the next few years to the Famous Five and the Adventure series and the Secret series and the Find-outers series (never liked them as much) and I hoovered them all up. And I bet my mum was thrilled, bless her, because she knew that at that age, volume is really more important than quality. Well, that's what I think she thought, and I think she was spot on.

Over the coming years, more books would appear by different authors at various times. Birthdays and Christmas, sure, but also if I'd just hit a bit of a pause for whatever reason. If I say my mum wanted to keep stoking the fire it'll sound a bit more precious than I really mean, but that was the gist of it.

Books I remember getting, and in most cases still have now:

- A Wizard of Earthsea
- My first Biggles book
- My first Willard Price book (African Adventure, I think). I thought Hal and Roger were very cool indeed
- A Jules Verne omnibus containing Around the World in 80 days, From the Earth to the Moon, and Twenty Thousand Leagues under the sea
- Lost in the Barrens, by Farley Mowat
- Where Eagles Dare and When Eight Bells Toll by Alistair Maclean. I would have been about twelve for those, I think, and Mum wanted to move me on from kids stories to..well, adolescent stories, I suppose. When I re-read them now they are ludicrously silly - but he had a style that is still guiltily appealing and his stories raced along
- When the Lion Feeds, by Wilbur Smith. Fourteen or Fifteen? Certainly my mum's cunning avoidance of the birds and bees talk, as I learnt a lot from Mr Smith. Even now I can tell you where the dirty bits are in a lot of his books, particularly that first one which made... no, I don't want to say a big impression cos you'll snigger

So bless her for all of the above, and the others I've forgotten, and the ones she tried that I just didn't like (Malcom Savile, the Sharpe books, among others).

But the one that sticks most in my mind is Swallows and Amazons.

I can't remember the date, but I can remember the circumstances. I was about ten or eleven, I think, and we were back in the UK and we were going to off to visit my Aunty Enid in Surrey (my Mum's older sister, and still hanging in there though nearly blind now), and suddenly this book appeared. Mum said she thought I might like it, though it looked a bit thicker than I was used to and I was a bit doubtful that any book that big could sustain my interest. It had a picture of a couple of sailing boats on the front (it was the film tie-in edition, for scholars amongst you).

So, wanting to at least show some good grace, I piled in. And a day later I finished it, and my mum asked me what I thought, and I said I was going to read it again. Now. And I did. And by the end of that trip I'd acquired every single book in the series, to be hoarded and gloated over on the return journey. Those same books are now sitting on a shelf in Robbie's room, though I fear they won't survive much longer as spines are cracking and pages are starting to fall out.

They are, far and away, my favourite books of childhood. And they are also the books that I re-read most often, though I've got rather naughty about that. Now I tend to dip into favourite passages (of which more below), rather than read the whole thing, which I know isn't really as good but sometimes that's all I want.

There are twelve books, as you probably know. I don't love them all equally. Indeed, I wouldn't mind at all if somebody told me I'd never read Missee Lee again, and Great Northern is a bit weak, and Peter Duck only works intermittently for me. I find Secret Water a little dull, but I always want to love it because I can still remember being on the phone to my mum and telling her that I'd been to the bookshop and bought another Arthur Ransome. Slight pause. Which one? I told her it was The Picts and the Martyrs. Relief from her. I've bought you Secret Water, she said.

If I had to pick one to keep, it would probably be Winter Holiday. The scene where Dick rescues the sheep, and the resulting thaw in Mr Dixon, is one of my frequent re-reads. Also where Captain Flint arrives back at this houseboat ("locusts, more like"). Pigeon Post and The Picts and the Martyrs complete my top three. Joe, Bill and Pete catching the pike in The Big Six gets re-read quite a lot. So does the saving of Squashy Hat in Pigeon Post. Captain Flint apologising to Captain John in S&A. But my overall favourite scene in the series is at the end of We Didn't Mean to Go To Sea, where John Walker gets a quiet compliment from his father.

It's late, and I meant to be more articulate about why I love these books, and indeed about my mum, but this will have to do. I know there are a lot of people out there who know the books better than I do and who love them as much if not more, and yet I still feel, deep down, they were written for me. And if you've got a copy of Coot Club, you should look at the illustration "shopping in Beccles". We live near Beccles now, and shop there quite regularly, and whenever I walk along that road I think a) Hello Arthur, and b) Hello Mum.

Me and Magnus

Wed, 19 Apr 2006 06:38:17 GMT

I am a bit of a credits junkie, as wives and ex-girlfriends will testify. I get exceedingly grumpy if there as is any prospect of me missing the opening credits, and quite often I am the last one to leave the cinema. Actually, I'm not so bad these days, as the desire to miss traffic and get home quickly usually overcomes the desire to find out who gets a special thanks, but my instinct is still to read whatever the filmmakers have decided to put in front of me.

All of which has added greatly to my knowledge over the years, as I have quite a good memory for utterly useless bits of information - I can not only tell you what the name of JR's secretary was, I can tell you the name of the actress who played her - but every now and then it will cause me to get a bit, well, obsessive.

Take, for instance, LazyTown.

LazyTown is on CBeebies at 7.30 each morning at the moment. If I post this in time, you may still get a chance to catch it. Please don't miss the credits. It's an OK programme, I don't particularly warm to it, but I can see that kids might enjoy it.

A few months ago I saw it for the first time from the start. ie. I saw the credits, which went something like:

Created by Magnus Scheving
Written by Magnus Scheving, Person X and Person Y
Directed by Magnus Scheving

Now, OK. Perfectly possibly young Magnus did all of these jobs, and it's fair that he gets a credit for each. But alarm bells also went off.

Then I discovered two additional facts:

1) Magnus is also the star of the show, playing a flawless hero called Sportacus, who all the kids love, natch. Sportacus's job is to come in each week and show the kids the error of their ways, ie. stop slobbing out and instead eat carrots and go camping. I think he deserves to end up in a dumpster, myself, but I can see that it's not an unreasonable goal.

2) Magnus is a TERRIBLE actor. I mean, school-assembly, over-the-top, trying way too hard kind of bad.

(PS. It sounds to me like Magnus could well be singing the theme song as well. Wouldn't surprise me. I can just imagine that day in the office. "Now, who's going to sing the song?" And Magnus's hand would shoot up, and everybody would look around, trying to pretend they hadn't seen it, but nobody else would volunteer, and, well, bless him, he works so hard and he's so keen...)

Now I was quite intrigued. So I googled some, hoping, I admit, to find a page which basically said "Jeez, that Magnus is a BAD actor, isn't he?" Didn't find one. (That gap is now filled.)

What I did find was this:

http://www.lazytown.com/about/history

And I think that confirms for me that, yes, Magnus didn't get enough praise when he was a kid.

Just chill, Magnus. Have some pizza.

Me and Bill G

Sun, 16 Apr 2006 23:27:15 GMT

In one of his non-fiction books - Hype and Glory, I think, which is a B minus effort - William Goldman says that when he dies, if the Times of London gives him an obituary it'll be because of his script for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

The obituary, when it comes, will note the following:

- He was a novelist who became a hugely successful and influential screenwriter
- He won an Academy Award for BC and the SdK
- He won another one for All the President's Men
- He wrote the cult classic The Princess Bride
- He wrote one of the classic books about Hollywood, Adventures in the Screen Trade

Not too shabby.

The obituary is unlikely to mention another achievement, which is that he was responsible for yours truly co-writing (to date) 19 episodes of varying quality of the BBC1 daytime soap Doctors and one so-so radio play and a variety of other bits and pieces which may or may not ever see the light of day.

WG has been my mentor and inspiration for a long time now. In my office I have his books to the right and to the left of me - all his novels and memoirs and collected essays to the left, and collections of his screenplays to the right. To be honest I don't take them down that often, but I can't imagine them not being there. Just last month I bought a copy of the screenplay of The Great Waldo Pepper, because it was by him and although I had the script as part of a volume of his collected screenplays, I didn't have that particular edition.

I was 15 or 16, I think, when I first read Adventures in the Screen Trade, which I found a brief reference to in the quite, quite wonderful Waterstone's Guide to Books, which I may have to write another essay about on another day. It sounded like a good read. I ordered it, devoured it, and my world changed in two ways.

1) I knew I liked films, really liked films, but so what? I had had only a vague sense of what a scriptwriter did up until then, but suddenly everything clicked into view for me. I was good at English, everybody said so - I WOULD BECOME A SCREENWRITER. And... well, twenty years on, I am, sort of. An odd, part-time, very limited one, and I'll be lucky to write for Casualty, let alone for Spielberg, but I can just about legitimately call myself a screenwriter.

2) Writing Style. I had never read a book as entertaining as AitST; I still think it's pretty good now, ten readings or so later. It was a combination of elements, I think, that made the reading of it so much fun.

--- A very conversational, gossipy tone. Almost blog-like, in fact.
--- A lot of genuinely entertaining and amusing anecdotes about his experiences.
--- A cheerfully chaotic mixture of styles and format
--- Reversals

More on the last of those shortly.

Suffice to say my prose style today, for better or worse, owes a lot to him. Go for speed over style. Try and get a rhythm going.

AND PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE DON'T BE BORING.

Anyway, I tracked down more of his books, which took some doing. The Colour of Light was in print then, I think, and also Brothers and Edged Weapons, so I ordered those from Waterstones from that great catalogue again, and I found a copy of Magic in a second-hand bookshop in Seaford, and then I read The Princess Bride.

Now I was really in love.

I can still remember sitting on the platform at Basingstoke station (waiting for my connection to Overton, for the completists), aged 17, on my way home from the school that's just shut, reading and re-reading the swordfight scene, particularly this reversal:

"I'm not left-handed either."

Brilliant.

HE WASN'T LEFT-HANDED EITHER.

If you've read it, or seen the (for me) so-so film, you'll know what I'm talking about. If not, and you're even vaguely interested, do read the book. It won't take long, you might not love it the way I loved it, but you won't be bored.

I'd like to say reversals are something I try and use whenever I can when I'm writing. The truth is the opportunities for really outrageous ones in 25 minute medical dramas are limited. But WG's advice about them is still valid: Put new twists on old twists. Anything to give the audience something they're not expecting, just when they think they're starting to get ahead of you.

I wrote quite a lot of bad rip-offs of TPB for the next few years. And I read pretty much all of WG's output, wherever and whenever I could find it. It was only last year that I finally got my own copy of the last of his novels that I didn't own (No Way to Treat a Lady). I still don't have Wigger, his book for children.

Enough autobiography, for now: Let's take a quick canter through his books in what I hope is chronological order, in case you're sufficiently interested to buy one on Ebay (there are usually some very cheap copies floating around - I know because I set up an email alert to be notified as soon as any new ones get posted.)

The Temple of Gold
Your Turn to Curtsy, My Turn to Bow
Soldier in the Rain
Boys and Girls Together
No Way to Treat A Lady
The Thing Of It Is...
Father's Day
The Princess Bride
Marathon Man
Magic
Tinsel
Control
The Silent Gondoliers
The Colour of Light
Edged Weapons
Brothers

I'd like to report that they're all brilliant and well worth reading, but actually I find everything pre-Princess Bride to be a bit of a dutiful slog. Flashes of what was to come, but no more. Post-PB I like much more, though it should also be noted that as a novelist, WG is often very, very odd.

Examples:
Marathon Man is a terrific thriller, and one I often pick up to get inspired. Great, jaw-dropping reversals throughout. Please forget the film if you can.
But then you have Brothers, which is a sequel to MM that he wrote about twenty years later. And, boy, is it weeeeirrrrrd. Entertaining, sure. But if I was to tell you the basic premise you would look at me strangely. I won't, because you might read it and it would spoil the surprise.
Control reads like an almost normal thriller until the end, when he springs a surprise on you that is a) totally unexpected (at least to me), and b) extremely strange.
Edged Weapons is pretty strange from the start, and gets stranger. (Final line: "his balls felt on fire.")

Of the others, Magic is an OK, spookyish, rather sad thriller that feels a bit tired on re-reading. The Colour of Light, his book about an aspiring novelist, is probably my favourite of his. That too has an unexpected ending. Tinsel is a fun, gossipy novel about Hollywood.

(Aside: I'm going to race for the finishing line now, because it's getting late. I haven't covered his non-fiction, possibly another day.)

- I once saw WG interviewed at the NFT by John Cleese. Early 90s, probably. At the box office I was just behind Stephen Fry who asked the ticket person, very politely, if he could pick up two tickets reserved in the name of Branagh. I ended up sitting just a few seats away from Mr Fry (Mr Branagh never did turn up) and he smiled at me very nicely.
- At this interview, WG repeated quite a few of the anecdotes he'd already told in Adventures in the Screen Trade, but we all laughed anyway.
- A year or so later, I read an interview with WG in a film magazine. It featured, almost word for word, some of the anecdotes from Adventures in the Screen Trade. I blamed the journalist for being lazy and lifting stuff from the book.
- Last year, I bought the two-disc DVD special edition of A Bridge Too Far. Not because I particularly like the film (though the scene where the guy runs to get the parachuted package and gets shot right at the end is a classic WG reversal). It was because the packaging advertised an audio commentary by screenwriter William Goldman. Hooray! And guess what? A) WG only featured very intermittently, and B) When he did, he told anecdotes that he'd already told us in Adventures in the Screen Trade.

Never mind. They're good stories.

I don't mind that, a couple of years ago a film producer who'd worked on a project with WG told me sadly that, "actually, he's not really a very nice man. Very bitter. Very unpleasant to women in particular." I might feel differently if I was a woman, of course.

I don't mind that, on re-reading them, a lot of his books seem to try too hard. Or that some of his tricks seem a bit obvious now.

I don't mind that he hasn't really written a good film since the seventies.

Is there a point to all this? I suppose it's just that, looking back, from the age of about 16 until probably about age 28, I was more than a bit in love with William Goldman, how he wrote, what he did, how he made me feel. Not so much now. But I can still remember how it felt.

Besides, that swordfight scene - changed my life.

This blogging lark, take 2

Thu, 13 Apr 2006 16:33:14 GMT

Right, enough lurking, at least for a while. I was starting to feel very sordid, rummaging around all these other blogs and contributing nothing of my own. But honestly, I don't know where you people find the time. And don't you lie awake worrying about Frankie correcting your grammar?

Anyway, I've been working like a beaver (haven't we all, I know) and, unusually, have something concrete to show for it. Which can be viewed at http://www.boevaluer.com. Unless you're a commercial property valuations groupie it's not really worth downloading (and it's a Windows app, sorry, but I would actually like to sell some)... but I have to say I'm ridiculously proud of it. I fire it up twenty times a day just to look at the pretty graphs.

Feedback from the people I've shown it too as been uniformly positive, though not without dark warnings about how that particular market niche is pretty well sewn-up already. Which it is, if you're a big property fund or a decent-sized agency firm, but if you're a small business (and there are a lot of them in this sector) then I don't think there's been much that's been affordable for them. We'll see. I expect zero to a handful of sales for the next 6-12 months, but that's fine - word of mouth is all, and that takes time.

(One of the interesting observations Eric Sink makes is that if you find a market sector that doesn't have competitors, you should worry.)

I'm writing this on the train just on my way back from another demo. One advantage I have is that I already know a lot of people in the property sector, and they're usually pretty willing to give me half an hour while I run through the software and they tell me what they like and don't like. The one this morning went very well: I count the number of questions before I get one that I have to say "Er, no, not yet, but it's coming" or "Oo, that's a good idea, thanks". I think I got past ten today. And it is nice when you fire it up and you show them how you can do a valuation in about 10 seconds, and they all look at each other and say "gosh, that's good."

The train now seems to have broken down...

In other news: I would like to do an online poll along the lines of "Vote here if you think blonde222 should come on holiday with us, and to hell with hypothetical paramours, even if she does have to spend a lot of time in the company of a two-year old and listen to a lot of baby talk". But I have no idea how.

Our train hasn't moved for 20 minutes - train ahead has broken down. What else can I tell you?

Ah yes. My old school is closing down. I was there from 84 to 87, did my O and A levels there, and I have to say that although it served me perfectly well and I really shouldn't grumble, it's not somewhere I remember fondly. It just seemed deeply average, then and now. I do remember in the last year or so feeling that the owners seemed intent on cramming in as many pupils as possible and that they seemed to be very focused on the bottom line. Perhaps that's unfair. Anyway, when I read this article I couldn't help wondering what would become of the plaque in the main hallway listing pupils who distinguished themselves academically each year - yes, my name is on it, though frankly I didn't do that brilliantly. I think they wanted some extra names to make it look more impressive. My mum, whose birthday it would have been today, certainly loved looking at it - I had to sneak her in once after a sports day. Maybe it'll turn up on Ebay.

We're moving again. I shall attempt to post this as we race through Suffolk, thanks to the miracle of 3G/GSM.

One final thing: does anybody else think that the LJ web interface is actually, well, a bit rubbish? Or are you all using some clever downloadable tools on your sleek and shiny Macs?

I'll try not to leave it so long next time.

Scraping by

Sat, 30 Jul 2005 17:22:06 GMT

From the Times website today:

"Between their respective positions there was a considerable financial disparity," said Lord Justice Thorpe. "The wife had a salary of about £85,000 per annum and lived in a rented flat in Cambridge. The husband was a high earner."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1713792,00.html

Maybe it's not worthy of comment, but it made me do a double-take.

Hmmm

Thu, 28 Jul 2005 08:47:01 GMT

Finally finished HP6. (minor spoilers follow)

Frankie_ecap was right, this was much better than the last one. Which doesn't make it that great. I read a very good review on somebody else's LJ (sorry, can't remember who) that said basically, JKR is rubbish on plots. And she is. Even now, I find it hard to remember exactly what was going on for most of the book - probably not helped by me skim-reading some of the duller bits (Dumbledore and HP go trawling through ANOTHER memory - ho hum).

Things I liked:
- She does adolescent romance quite well. I was far more interested in the various Harry/Ginny/Ron/Hermione/Lavender subplots than I was in the main story.
- The sequence towards the end, with Harry and Dumbledore, was quite exciting
- It did set up a finale quite nicely for Book 7, though I only have a hazy idea as to what Harry's setting off to do. Retrieve various bits of Voldemort from assorted knick-nacks, I believe.

Things that drove me bonkers:
- Dumbledore confirming my opinion that, despite the reverence of all around him, he really is an incompetent buffoon. His recruitment record is shocking.
- JKR's revelation about Snape early on. Bad storytelling. Why do this unless you're going to foil the reader's expectations later with a reversal of some kind? Maybe JKR is planning to do this in book 7, but I'm doubtful. Maybe she hoped that it would increase the suspense for the reader. If so, didn't work for me.

And, er, the Half-Blood prince. What exactly has that added to the story?

If only JKR had kept her canvas small. Self-contained comic adventures of the boy Wizard Harry and his pals. There's great mileage in her idea that even wizards have to go through adolescence. She's so good (and this is another steal from that excellent review elsewhere on LJ) at the small, comic details of her world. Thing is, her world just doesn't really lend itself to large, Lord of the Rings style battles between good and evil. It's like watching Frank Spencer do Die Hard.

Only a day late

Mon, 18 Jul 2005 13:53:21 GMT

Have sent draft 3 off to co-writer Mike. Nothing structural or substantive in the changes, just fine tuning and the odd extra beat.

I have quite high hopes for this episode, as it features one of the most unpleasant characters we've ever written. The one thing I've learnt is that bad characters are much easier to write than good ones, and audiences like them just as much, if not more so. Fingers crossed for good casting and a decent director.

Broadcast date is scheduled for 17/2/2006, which seems an awfully long way away.

Strange local goings on

Sat, 16 Jul 2005 15:01:09 GMT

Let's try a link:
Not what you want to cycle past

More cheerfully, here is a picture of cute wild kittens in our garden:
The Kittens

Late Night Friday

Fri, 15 Jul 2005 22:31:50 GMT

J is having a girl's night out with other local Mums at the Bungay Curry House. Due back any moment.

R is asleep, finally, though he obviously thought Mum being out meant boy's night in, staying up late and watching questionable films on Channel 5. Finally went down at 9, though he didn't have any milk, which makes him a ticking time bomb.

Clarification: the times cited in previous entry were only approximations. My memory is pretty hazy. What I do remember is leaving J at about 12.45 to check on R, establishing all was well, and heading for the spare room. Then at least 3 times during the night there were grumbles which meant covers had slipped off and R was cold but not yet awake. You have to strike quickly at such times. At the last of these visits I decided I would take him into bed with me, which he much prefers, understandably, and is usually pretty nice for me as well, unless he is wriggling, which is when you decide the cat was really plenty.

Your reward for such vigilance is that he sleeps through until 7.30, rather than insisting you get up at 6 to watch the Hoobs. (I rather like the Hoobs, and often find myself humming the theme song at inappropriate moments, but you have to be in the right mood).

And honestly, I felt great when I woke up. Parental adrenalin, or something, though am feeling a bit knackered now.

I got my new PC mostly sorted out today, and I can spend some of the weekend fine-tuning it to make sure that all the software compiles OK, and I have all necessary databases, etc. Good to get it done, as my existing PC had taken to dying mysteriously whenever I turned my back on it. Can't seem to get any sound on the new one yet though, which is irritating.

Intellectual news: I should get the new Harry Potter in the post tomorrow. I found the last one rather an effort to get through, but I'm loyal.

Watching, #1: Second series of Six Feet Under. A distant fourth behind Sopranos, West Wing and 24, but very acceptable. I'm only an episode and a half in, and I suspect by episode 6-7 I'll be hooked. And then blonde222, or is it 222blonde, will be home with Series 2 of "The Wire" for me.

Watching, #2: With J, all the episodes of "V". Remember, the alien lizard invasion thing? It hasn't aged well, to put it kindly, but it's agreeably nostalgic.

Reasons to be cheerful, cont: The kittens are getting less scared of me, particularly baby Tabsy. They still scoot off when I go out into the garden but I get the impression it's now more with a sense of irritation than abject terror. They spend quite a lot of time sleeping on the decking outside my study door and look quite indignant when I disturb them.

Clouds on the horizon: Nah, not going to try and think one up. Pretty peachy, generally. Bad news for my writing, of course, as misery is much better for creativity. I shall try and drop something heavy on my foot tomorrow before starting work.

Under way

Fri, 15 Jul 2005 08:11:12 GMT

I don't really know if this is a good idea, as I can see this becoming a massive displacement activity, but still...

I was in London yesterday. Normally I get the tube at least some of time, and taxis for the rest, but J suggested taking my bike which is something I'd half-thought about doing previously, and so I gave it a go. Worked well - guards on Anglia trains are very helpful about that sort of thing, which half-compensates for the fact that the service seems to be slowly deteriorating (the last 4-5 journeys I've made have all been hit by some kind of problem). Cycling in London again was great, though I chose a day that was just a bit too hot for comfort. And I'd forgotten my golden rule about never cycling down Oxford Street. The only minor grumble is that I always go first class (defence: business expense, it means I can actually work, I would kill people if I was in standard during rush hour) and so am always at far end of train from guard's van.

I was in a dull meeting at 12 for the two minutes silence. Would have much preferred to be outside.

Reasons to be cheerful #1: notes on draft 3 of current Doctors script are minimal and, even better, next draft isn't due for over a week. Also the story idea for next script is approved by Exec Producer, so we're in business.

Reasons to be cheerful #2: Comment from user yesterday - "It's really a very good system, it just needs a few small tweaks." This is an Oscar in software terms.

Reasons to be cheerful #3: I was on baby duty last night, and Robbie slept quite well until 7.30. Of course, there were a few grumbles from him in the night which meant I was up at 3, 4 and 6, but you take that for as par for the course.

Reasons to be cheerful #4: Think I have quite a good idea for radio play. Would like to do one on blogs but could be too similar to last effort and quite hard to dramatise. Much better device for novel, I think.

Clouds on the horizon #1: Still have a load of small, fiddly, dull tasks to do on some software projects.

COTH #2: Have to do tax return.

Things to do today: Some of the small, fiddly, dull tasks. Get my head around some more aspects of the XML DOM. Perhaps creating a file from scratch is a better way of learning than reading one in. Do a one page outline on Radio play. Get my new PC sorted out - why am I putting that off?

Things to do over the weekend: The doctors script, then it's done.