You are allowed to enjoy this…

I like movies and one of my favourites is the classic “The Wicker Man”. I remember seeing it the very first time and being completely shocked and horrified by the ending. It’s an amazing feat of filmaking that you DON’T guess the ending until it is all too late. Anyway, they are remaking this classic and moving the characters from a remote Scottish isle to the American mid-West. Christopher Lee is being replaced by Ellen Burstyn and Nick Cage is taking on the guise of Edward Woodward. Like all “re-imagings” that have gone before, it sounds horrid and director Neil La Bute should be taken outside and sacrificed inside a huge flaming Wicker Cock as penance for his crimes. Only kidding!
Anyway, here are some snaps from the film set. It’s going to go down as well as the US versions of “Get Carter” and “The Italian Job”, I tells ya!

Recently…
The Missus had some time off work, so we used the time wisely by going to the pub and enjoying the last warm pre-Autumn afternoons. Ahhh, The Plume of Feathers…what mysteries lie within? Will there be cider? Will there be sausages? Will there be a case of diarrheoa the following day? That’s the alcohol-fuelled game we play at the Plume. The quality declines…I blame the management. It’s a woman, who is frankly useless. The previous manager was great; everything was clean (even the seating area outside, as he would often sweep it himself) they would organise charity events and there was pub quizzes and stuff. Despite refurbishment, the place is grubby, the food random and the cider poor…plus she can’t pour a pint. She makes sure the cider finishes about two centimetres below the lip of the glass. Moan, moan, moan…but why complain? It’s staggering distance from home and it’s nowhere near as chavtastic as The Clydesdale or The Gunmaker’s Arms, where one wrong look could get you sampling hospital food and a woman’s fertility is measured by how many tatoos she’s got. Me – a snob? Nah, I came from the gutter with my arse hanging out my trousers. I just resent being made to feel scared by the underclass.
Ahhh, the underclass. You know what I mean.
So anyway, I realised that it would be better for me to remain permanently bladdered. Drinking becomes a fine art when you get older. Too much and you get tired and want a lay down, too little and you don’t feel any effect at all. I managed to find the ideal level the other day. It’s around the five/six pints of cider mark. I start to feel warm and glowy like the Ready Brek man and the world just makes more sense. If only I could stay like that forever. Unfortunately, the problem with getting slightly sozzled is being sober because that’s when you get the headache, the sore tummy and the vow never to drink again. Ho hum. Of course, it is a load of BS. But the side effects get worse as you get older. Not fair, Mr Barman.
So what to write about in this blog? I don’t know. I was considering stopping the blog and writing anonymously. Why? Well a week or so ago, I applied for a local job that I actually really wanted and by looking that the records, I noticed they visited here (and so did the guy I had entrusted as a referee on my CV). They visited twice on two separate occasions. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the job (I very rarely do, you know) and now I am paranoid that it was this blog that scuppered my chances. Maybe I should be like the others and assume a pseudonym? It’s probably too late, no?
There’s loads of other stuff I could blather on about but it is deeply personal and deeply boring and so I shall just fill the space with my usual inanities because that’s what my regular reader wants.
In the post: I received the Steve Hackett remasters last week. Very nice. I’d waited fifteen years for these and it was worth the wait, so when we were travelling around in the car, we had Hackett blasting on the radio. Oh yeah, some of those prog guitar epics make for good driving music.
Today, I received a gizmo for my PSP that will charge it using solar energy. Fuel prices are rising and so I am doing my bit to save the world. OK, it is a small bit, but it is a bit nonetheless. I also discovered that my theory about the PSP being region-free was baloney. It seems that only Spider-Man 2 is region-free. Whoopsie doodle.
Meanwhile, I am looking around at all this stuff, at all these musical instruments, at all these CDs and the gear and the gizmos and all the money I’ve pissed up the wall and I am feeling like I should convert to Bhuddism and sell my belongings and live in a cave. Sometimes I worry that the lack of human contact is sending me a little ga-ga.
Ooooohhhh…I get it. It’s writing stuff like that in my blog that ruins my chances of getting a job, right? 🙂

The BBC website is hosting an interactive timeline celebrating 50 years of its commercial rival ITV. When I clicked the link, I got this:

Well it made me laugh…(guess you had to be there)

Oh look…
http://www.webuser.co.uk/products/Sony_PSP_review_2691.html
My PSP is famous.

Brrr…
You can feel the change in the air as we slip from Summer to Autumn. I went to take Alex the Wonderdog for a limp this morning and as I stepped out into the mid-morning air, I noticed that it was a lot “fresher” than yesterday. Normally, I do the trip in a T-shirt and jeans, but today I put my leather jacket on to keep out the chill. I’ve also noticed that I’m finding it harder to leave my bed in the mornings. In the summer, I can usually get up with no problems, but once it starts to get a little darker, I just pull the covers back over my head when the alarm signals.
Really enjoyed last night “49 Up” TV show – a documentary series that has followed a dozen people from all walks of life in England as they grow from 7 years to the present day. The documentary team films them every seven years and documents what has happened to these characters. When you see something like this, you realise that TV is worthwhile and there is a wealth of humanity to experience through these programmes. It’s frightening to see how time flies so quickly for these people (and I’ve been following this since the mid-80s) but it is also reassuring that we all go through the same transformative process. Faces change, opinions change, politics change, fashions change and all this is documented. One thing that made me laugh was the guy “Tony” who is an archetypal Eastender, who is quitting London because the East End has changed and he is tired of his culture being eroded away by foreign, immigrant cultures. So what’s he to do? He’s moving to spain to open up a British “Sports Bar”. Does anyone see the irony in this or is it just me? And what annoys me about this fuckwits is that the East End has always been home to the immigrant. When my grandmother lived there it was the influx of Poles and Jews that caused offence (she was a decendent from the French Hugenot immigrants herself) – so it makes me laugh so hard that I hurt whenever I hear these people bleating. I said to The Missus, in 25 years time, we’ll hear Bengalis complaining about the current immigrants diluting their culture that they’ve established in the East End.
Back to “Dead Rock Star” – sitting down to bang out chapter six. This is an important chapter for the protagonist and now I hope I can start to stretch out with it. The opening chapters have all been about the characters coming to terms with their change of circumstances and hopefully after chapter six I can begin to open up the story a bit. Coming up we’ve got some good shit – there’s goth rocker Daniel De’ath suffering from writer’s block, there’s the ghosts of Abbey Road and the race to put the first spirt on Mars. Oh yeah, crazy shit.
In the post: yesterday, I took delivery of a compressor unit for my rack FX. Been having trouble getting a nice loud, clean signal from my gear and I was hoping this will fix it. My bass sounds a lot fuller without the disortion I was getting, so maybe it is working out. It lights up like a Christmas tree when it is in full effect.
In the post: today, a cheque from the tower of evil. I think this will probably be my last paycheck for this particular publisher. It was good while it lasted and I tried my best to keep them happy, but when push comes to shove, some writers are more popular than others (and these ones seem to get ALL the work). Oh the bitter resentment, oh how wicked and twisted it makes me feel. This is why I am trying with my creative writings because I feel that I’ve totally failed with the freelance writer path. There needs to be a cull of writers or something. Give me the club and I’ll smash some brains like a randy Norwegian at the height of seal culling season. Grrrr…smash…destroy…kill…

As The Missus prepared for her pre-bedtime ablutions last night, she called me upstairs urgently. An errant blue tit had come in through a small window and was flying wildly around the upstairs room. Lock sprung into life with a towel and began to usher the small bird from room to room in order to get it back out the window. In a game of cat and mouse (or man and bird), I managed to convince the little blighter that his home was outside and not with us.
Here’s a picture of the little critter (no lampshades were harmed during the incident):

I thought it was strange that a blue tit should be flying around at midnight. I thought birds were nocturnal. The only flying creatures around this way are bats – though we have heard a seagull flying at night, cawing as it flies, which is quite earie as you hear it circling above you in the darkness, making seagull noises.
Meanwhile, Alex the Wonderdog has reverted to his evil alter-ego “Mr Licky”. Mr Licky is pure evil with a cute face. He licks and he licks and he licks until vast swathes of fur is gone and bellies are left red and sore and paws are left swollen. I heard him having a crafty lick in the early hours of the morning and then he jumped up and woke me up. This morning it was obvious what he had done, he had licked his paw sore and now it is swollen and he is lame. Stupid dog. When Mr Licky makes an appearance we usually resort to using the Hannibal Lector mask:

So now Mr Licky is Mr Hoppy as he limps around the house. I’ve bandaged his paw and hopefully it will heal itself in the next couple of days…