Gold!

I get an annual travelcard loan from work.  It's great, because it works out cheaper than buying a monthly one and I also get a gold travelcard which makes me a SUPER SPECIAL passenger and I get GOLD STANDARD treatment from the travel people.  Actually, it's just a record card.  My travelcard is an Oyster, and I love it.

Anyway.  Last year, the fool who gave me my travelcard managed to print the record card, my lovely gold record card, upside-down.  Upside down!  I had to live with that for a whole year!  Any time someone wanted to check my ticket, it was a bit embarrassing.  I was looking forward to the new card because - yes! finally! - I would have a proper-way-up record card.  I took my travel warrant along to Liverpool Street and eagerly awaited my new, sensible, neat record card.

Yeah, they printed this one upside-down, too.

Thwarted but happy, I suppose

Many years ago, I wrote a screenplay for a fan film of Maskerade by Terry Pratchett. It never got made because everyone else involved was a flake, damn them. Anyway, never mind. About a year later, I was the flake when someone asked me if I could write a script for a version of The Colour of Magic. I just couldn't make it work (because there's no coherent story, just a bunch of episodes), so it never went anywhere.

But but but, the big idea I had was to combine The Colour of Magic and its sequel The Light Fantastic, to give the thing a bit of structure. And I just checked out the website for Sky's adaptation of The Colour of Magic aaaaand, guess what they've done?

Well. Seems like it wasn't such a killer idea at all. At least it got made, I guess. And, hey, Sky? If you're thinking of doing Maskerade at any point, I have this script...

Shadow over the sanctuary

In my quest to immerse myself in spookiness to aid with my own writing (I'm limbering up with a short story before embarking on an epic venture, much as a marathon runner might do the odd lunge before donning a Spongebob suit and getting out on the streets of London), I'm reading some Lovecraft.

I've always thought I'd like his stuff, and a talking book of The Call of Cthulhu & The Dunwich Horror cemented that view late last year (it's on Audible.co.uk and the narrator - Wayne June - has the best voice for this sort of thing, ever.  He's also got his own website, but I can't do links when I'm posting here via email.  But you can guess the url).  But it's surprisingly hard to find his work in shops.  Thank heaven for Foyle's and for Penguin Modern Classics.  Three big ol' collections of the good stuff, but one at a time, moth, one at a time.  I have in my bag The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Tales.  It's got some crackers.  Herbert West - Reanimator, Dagon, The Colour Out of Space and the Shadow Over Innsmouth.

What I didn't realise, from my distance, was just how much I would love his New England.  How richly drawn the area of the Miskatonic Valley is, how vividly alive (and crawlingly sinister) the landscape and its inhabitants feel.  I could wallow for hours in this world, seeking out its twisted farmhouses, blasted hillsides and quiet, menacing populace.  It's like cryptozoology for people... cryptoanthropology, I guess.

I was just expecting big, shambling monsters.

We have a map

There's a map up at work, showing the Health Authority boundaries in, oh, 1982.  Pre some reform or other.  For some reason our case management system works in these archaic boundaries (there's even a Wessex!).  The trouble is, it's a bit... odd.

For example, Hampstead and Bloomsbury are classed as North East Thames.  North East!  Mental.  This can of worms was opened this morning.  I then foolishly blundered in and mentioned about Sheffield, Rotherham, Barnsley and Doncaster, all of which were classed as Trent.  Not Yorkshire.  Trent.  I say foolishly, because guess who has to go through and find all the cases which are geographically correct but, well, wrong?  Yup.  That'll be me.

Weirdly, though, some of the Yorkshire/Trent ones are even more wrong.  Rotherham - in Mersey..?

Rain, and a sort-of joke about breasts

I got a chance to try out my new umbrella this morning.  It is quite small.  No, scratch that, it's wee.  It's tiny.  I can barely get my head under it.  It does, of course.  But I really want a proper umbrella, from an umbrella shop.  One with a curved wooden handle, that furls up in a satisfying manner and protects more than just me from the weather.  Plus, at about six foot, I am in the group least likely to poke you in the eye with an umbrella spoke.  People of 5'9" and under - watch where you're going with those things!

Oh, while I'm here, addendum to the Tomb Raider post.  They use a sort of ragdoll physics model to show you lifeless Lara when, for example, she drops from a dizzyingly high platform for the billionth time and you have to restart the section.  While I'm sure it accurately models the way her dead limbs would flop about, I find it unlikely that she would fall on her back with such unwavering regularity.

It is too hot. Yes, too hot.

Amazingly, our photocopying room makes our office - with its broke-ass air conditioning and giant greenhouse windows - seem cool and refreshing.  I long to get out into the freezing wind.

Thank you, lord

I'm glad I don't live in America.  I think this whole pre-election bollocks would kill me. I mean, it's tedious enough as it is being over here.  Over there, where it's actually important, day-to-day?  I think that would be sort of like hell.  And this isn't even the election!  This is just who gets to stand in the election!  There are NINE MORE MONTHS TO GO before someone is elected.  And after that it'll be appeals and dimpled chads and all that guff.

Refreshingly, the elections for the Mayor of London are coming up in May and it's so very...  I mean, I know it's not as important in the grand scheme of things, but it's pretty close to home and I'm not really hearing much about it at all, beyond a sort of background hum.  Maybe that will change when the candidates are officially announced, but I think by then we'll be close enough to the day that it'll be, well, it'll be time.

Meanwhile, America will be voting on what socks each candidate will wear during their inauguration.