I saw the new ITV Saturday teatime/Dr Who competition TV show Demins yesterday. I was out on Saturday night and, not having an means of recording TV these days I was relying on Virgin on Demand. Unfortunately they have yet to sign up ITV to the service, so I then fell back on ITV`s wtach online service. I got about 30 seconds into it when I gave up because the quality was really poor - there is just no excuse when BBCs iPlayer does it so much better. So I fell back on good old BitTorrent. It`s a pretty sad state of affairs when going the iilegal route gets you a better quality prodcut than the legal one. ITV just have no defense for this. SORT IT OUT!
In the end I actually abandoned the torrent as I realised it was repeated on ITV2 on Sunday night so I watched that instead. The show wasn`t bad - very Buffy-esque and, although it looked quite dark, it was relatively light and fluffy in the story department which basically revolved around Uncle Rupert suddenly appearing and telling teenage hearthrob Luke that he was a relative of Van Helsing and destined to kill monsters. Personally I think it was all just a bit too rushed - they could have kept the mystery going a bit longer but as it was, Luke was a fully fledged monster hunter by the end of episode one and seemed relatively accepting of it all. Personally if I`d been aged 18 and some fat uncle with a weird American accent turned up with a cheesy ray gun and started killing every deformed person who crossed our path, I would have gone to the police for a restraining order fairly sharp-ish. But then that wouldn`t have made good televison for kids so I guess I`ll let them off and suspend my belief for a bit longer.
Far more importantly on Saturday night, the next actor to play Dr Who from 2010 was announced. They went for a pretty much unknown named Matt Smith. My thoughts: yes, he looks odd. Yes, he`s younger than I hoped (I`d rather they`d gone older). Yes, he had really floppy hair. And whilst the programme didn`t do him many favours, in particular the cheesy turn to camera gurn at the very end, the clips of him in previous TV dramas looked very good. And if Stephen Moffat, writer of all the best Dr Who epsiodes in the last 4 years and head writer on the series from 2010, says he`s the one, then I guess that`s a good enough recommendation for me. Tennant will be a tough act to follow but overall I think it is a good choice.
And, as an added bonus, a Dr Who/Mr Potatohead toy crossver line will now be a really easy sell.
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Today (and for most of yesterday) my head and neck have been hurting. I think it is delayed aches and pains from falling flat on my back on new years day and banging my head. I think I have "gardeners whiplash" (as I have now named the condition) and possibly mild concussion as I can feel my brain ache inside my skull when I move my head too quickly. I think, as is the way with most people in my family, I shall just put up with it and assume it will go away in time (someone has tp balance out all the people who call ambulances because they have a broken fingernail) If it gets worse and blood starts leaking from inside my head or I discover I cannot feel my feet when I wake up one morning then I shall reconsider my decision not to go to hospital.
If you were to look up the phrase "biting off more than you can chew" in a dictionary (or whatever book it is that contains meanings for phrases rtaher than just single words) and you would probably find a picture of me standing up a ladder with a saw trying to chop down a surprisinlgy large tree.
Today I moved into the next phase of "Operation Garden Tidy" and went to my neighbour at the back of my house to try and chop down several sycamore tress in their garden that had got out of control. Again, this is a pensioner who cannot do it themslevs or can`t really afford to get someone in to help (I walked though the house and I really can begin to appreciate the term "poverty" after seeing how they lived - beilve me there are far more important things for them to be spending money on than chopping down trees).
A couple of smaller tress right in the corner near my garden came down with relatively little trouble (the trunks were quite thick so needed a lot of tiring sawing but they weren`t very tall at all). The main 2 I wanted to get rid of were growing though an old wooden greenhouse. It didn`t take much to demolish some of the rotting frame of the greenhouse and I tidied away a lot of the old sheets of broken glass (I didn`t fancy falling onto that after yesterday`s near miss with the metal spike). Howvere oce I got the ladder up to them, I ralised just how tall they were. I`d expected the ladder to get about halfway up so I`d cut off the top 1/2 or 1/3 then come down a nd do the rest. Well, the ladder probably only made it 1/3 of the way up this tree and it was only stanbding underneath it that I rtealised just how big it was. And this was one of the smaller ones that needed to come down! There was just no way to cut it down safely with only one person as it ideally needs at least onme other helper with ropes to help control the descent of the but being but off (falling in the wrng direction would have it landing on a house, a caravan or a green house!) Plus a longer ladder would help. And possibly someone else to hold the ladder. And a chainsaw. Maybe it`ll jus be easier to fork out some of my own money to get it done.
I spent new years eve in Azeroth watching the fireworks in Booty Bay and Stormwind Keep. I tired visiting Thuinder Bluff, the Horde party capital but it was a total damp squib. Theose Tauren just don`t know how to throw a good party like the humans at Stormwind where there were loads of people seeting off various party spells and partaking in the free ale.
And back in the real world I consumed chocolate cheesecake, crisps and watched Meet the Fockers on TV. I dislike new year. All it does is mark the end of one shitty period of time and herald the arrival of yet another. "Life is shit and then you die" - what a great saying.
And this aftrernnon I continued clearing my neighbours garden. I have decided that the way forward is to start dumping sacks of rubbish into wheely bins as often as possible. It`s slow butover several months it should make a clear difference. I even made the extra effort to extract plastic bottles and cans to put in the recycling bin. I will also be writing to my MP to complain about how useless Affinity are - the last time I did this it got a vague result so it`s worth a go.
And as well as cleaning up rubbish I cut a few more tress back to stumps although one of them nearly killed me. It was only about 2 foot tall and I`d cut it through close to the ground and decided to stand on it to get it to break off the rest of the way. Well it broke far easier than expected - the tree stunp went one way and I went the other and I found myself flat on my back with various bits hurting lots. The back of my leg and elbow took most of the impact and were bruised and grazed. And my head hit the ground too but, ironically, I think the blow was cushioned by the thick layer of undergrowth. Fortunately I managed to avoid landing of the 4 inch metal spike sticking out of the ground less than a few feet away. Had I landed on that I expect it would have been an extended hospital trip or death for me. Thus I have now decided it really is worth the extra effort to saw tree stumps all the way through.
Today I decided to once again begin the near fruitless task of tidying up my next door neighbour`s messy garden.
My neighbour is a pensioner (although only just) and seems to suffer from so many arthritus type ailments I`ve lost count. Thus her garden, both front and back, have never been tidy.
She lives in a council house which is looked after by the local housing association, Affinity, who are next to useless. They come and strim the front lawn (and I use the term losely - it`s more like a large patch of weeds that they keep udner control) and prune the hedge in the front of her house but that`s it. Nothing is done about the back.
And to make matters worse, a few years back, Affinity did a whole load of work tidying up these properties, adding new kitchens, bathrooms etc. and cl;earing out old junk where required. The problem was that they took all the rubbish fropm her house, dumped it in the back garden and never came back. I have tried complaining to them about this after I found a dead rat in my garden and spotted a fox in the jungle that had grown around the rubbish, but they just said the budget had been closed and the project completed and there was nothing they could do. Oh well, as long as their financial spreadsheet looks nice and tidy I suppose that`s all that matters.
Anyway, it got to the satge where it was growing above the level of my fence and the tress were getting oput of control. During the summer I cut back some of the trees but only now, once it had all died back a bit for the winter did I venture back to carry on. I flattened a lot of it and chopped some of the tress back to stumps. But there is just too much rubbish to make any real impact. I took the large appliances out the front ready for the council to collect - all but the fridge freezer and plactic TV were soon grabbed by scrap dealers roaming the streets on the look out for stuff to earn them a few quid.
I got stung by nettles several times, once to the face which wasn`t particularly nice. Plus when my neighbour came out to offer me some tea she said "do you realise you have blood dripping from your ear?" - I had managed to cut myself and not notice! Stupid thing wouldn`t stop bleeding either. I gave up trying to stop it in the end and just carried on with a big wadge (spelling? Is it even a real word!?) of toilet roll wrapped round my ear! At least it distracted me from the stinging sensation to the face.
So much for writing blog posts more often...
I seem to have slipped into apathy for pretty much everything of late, not helped by having a cold for the past 2 weeks (and counting) that has meant I am out of energy and really just want to sleep. As of tomorrow morning I will have my Christams shopping completed (normally it`s be sooner but I balme my mum for giving me the wrong code number for some lights I am getting my dad, and thus they had to go back, and I was only told the replacements had arrived later this afternoon.)
Haven`t been to the cinema for almost 2 months now either. OK, so there hasn`t been a lot on (mainly beacsue the studios delayed all their big films to fill a gap in the summer schedule next year caused by the writers strike) although I do want to see both The Cahngeling and The Day the Easrth Stood Still. Maybe Blu-Ray has finally killed off my desire for general cinema attendance - it is stressful knowing that I will have to put up with people yapping throughout the film (it has now transcended wondering "if" people will will spend the film talking to expecting it all the time). Plus prices seem to have gone up yet again. I was all excited about a new Vue cinema opening in Camberley with all digital projection and some 3D screens but their prices are even more ridiculous - you pay extra for it being a new cinema, extra for decent seats in the middle, extra for 3D screenings and extra for asults only (i.e. no screaming kids) screenings. This makes it ther same price as the IMAX in London!
Maybe I will get out over Christmas if I am not too stuffed full of food, especially as I am off work for 16 full days in a row now (hooray!)