The Zygon Invasion.

TV “You're middle-aged, that's what it is. No offence. Everybody middle-aged always thinks the world's about to come to an end. Never does.” Yes, thank you evil Zygon clone of Clara. But you try turning forty-one. All day I’ve been considering the implications. Forty-one’s a weird age. It’s not a milestone like forty and it doesn’t somehow unlock the secret of life, the universe and everything as I expect forty-two to do. You’re just sort of verified as being in your early forties. About the only revelation I’ve had is that my favourite colour’s electric pink after having tried to convince myself for many years, probably because of societal norms, that it’s royal blue.  That's resumably why I also love Cath Kidson shops as much as I do even though I have barely a use for any of it.

Today has also brought presents which apart from a Frozen bluray, soundtrack cd and 2016 calendar also included the first Doctor Who episode broadcast on my birthday which I’ve actually been able to watch, not having been in this world in 1964 when Planet of Giants was broadcast. Thankfully Peter Harness’s The Zygon Invasion wasn’t a disappointing end to an otherwise brilliant day, but the first story this year and I think in a few years, which made me gasp on several occasions and had me applauding at the end. Which is why I’m happy to spend the final couple of hours of today writing about it although as we both know, if I didn’t do it now, the results would be even more disastrous than you're about to witness. Best get all of this out now before I’ve really had a chance to think about it.

Bold and necessary opening. Anyone else wonder if there’s a reason why there are all of these reminders of the show’s past, recent and otherwise? It’s potentially necessary here to somewhat explain why there are twenty million Zygons living on Earth for casuals who haven’t rewatched the fiftieth anniversary since it was beamed into our retinas through screens large and small and might wonder why anyone would do such a thing, but every story this year has featured some kind of flashback. At first I thought this was part of the non-celebration of the tenth anniversary of the revival which isn’t happening, except the augmented publicity shot of Bill wiping his glasses from The Celestial Toymaker hanging on the wall in the UNIT Safe House makes it seem as though they’re trying fit every incarnation in somewhere.

Before heading off into the more deliberate discussion of the rest of the episode, let’s consider why this might be. Partly it could be to give Capaldi a more subliminal version of the montage which provided Matt Smith with his entrance in The Eleventh Hour, something he was denied. Or it’s a forward reference to an upcoming episode which explains his cameo in The Day of the Doctor (because Moffat hates loose ends). Or someone in the production team is playing Packham and trying to fit them all in somewhere before the end of the season. Either way, we await the McGann cameo with great interest (and I haven’t entirely disregarded the notion of the actor himself turning up in some capacity). Unless the Doctor’s Amazing Grace solo is an astonishing inside joke.

Anyway, back in the episode, we have an all too rare example now of the television series underpinning its japery with some contemporary real world allegory, in this case religious fundamentalism with direct hits made towards ISIS in particular, the terrorist organisation rather than Sutekh’s sister. If Aliens of London made fun of the apparent intelligence that which led to the war in Iraq, here’s The Zygon Invasion ten years later considering some of the consequences and somehow also commenting on a refugee crisis which hadn’t even gained publicity when the story was in-production. With Spooks and W1A off-air, someone has to do this sort of predictive texting, I suppose.

Given how well regarded the Zygons seem to be amongst the public (and David Tennant) it’s surprising that this only their third proper television appearance, although their spin-off mythology is deep, spanning videos of the kind which aren’t allowed to mention which series they’re based on, novels, audios and comics. Just look at the Datacore entry, through not too closely because there are plenty of spoilers for excellent stories worth tracking down, notably the Eighth Doctor trilogy of which some of tonight’s episode is particular reminiscent especially about how they might integrate into our society. Like the Daleks they’re gifted with an particularly distinctive vocal sound, all gurgling consonant, which even on audio immediately brings to mind their physical form.

With so much of this series being influenced in the 70s show, it shouldn’t be too much of surprise to find Harness channelling Hulke and Holmes, though not having read any pre-publicity, I don’t know the extent to which we’re seeing the writer’s political leanings inhabiting his scripts or if he’s simply utilising this “stuff” to help underpin the drama and place it within a understandable context. Plenty of the dialogue is on the nose though, especially from the Doctor who notes at one stage that if they start bombing even these interlopers it has the potential to radicalise the lot. There is not much here for the Daily Mail to enjoy. “Well you can’t have the United Kingdom. There are already people living there. And they’ll probably think you’ll want to pinch their benefits.” Bdum-tish.

If the episode’s approach to thematic underpinning and actual source material is of the 70s, the structural twist is that in an era which has otherwise attempted to ape the pacing of that era with long scenes filled with lots of dialogue in single locations, this is a story which instead sees a return to the pacier crosscutting and action orientated plotting of earlier period of the revival before the show took a Deep Breath. At one point there’s three whole sub-plots running simultaneous with secondary characters, including, as it turns out, a Zygon officer (albeit in a form which isn’t obvious until the end). If the Capaldi era so far, for the most part, has felt a bit cramped and claustrophobic, this is the show explaining where the budget’s been for half a season demonstrating that it can still look like a feature film if it wants to.

How deliberate are these choices? Who knows, but the effect is startling, luminous. This feels of a piece with the likes of the aforementioned Slitheen fest and the Sontaran showdown from series three, and not just in its use of doppelgangers and one particular in-joke about a certain “controversy”. The Davies era in particular had this kind of inter-seasonal variety within its DNA, with Midnight and Turn Left emerging one after the other and none of which is to say that next week won’t simply be about Twelfth going Jack Bauer on a Zygon for half an hour in the UNIT equivalent of Guantanamo until he’s discovered the location of the real Clara (epic to small being a typical two-parter arrangement in the revival). Perhaps if the change of pace hadn’t been quite so deliberate back in the days of last year many of us might not have felt quite as disorientated (though having the Doctor act like a complete arsehole didn’t help much).

It’s also true that with the exception of the aforementioned axe-habit, the wilder excesses of the Twelfth Doctor are toned down to the point that he’s almost the fabled generic Doctor in places, showing a remarkable amount of courtesy and decency. The story would have worked equally well with the Eleventh Doctor probably although as with Time Heist, it seems strange when he doesn’t intervene to stop the UNIT soldiers from being kidnapped and killed by the Zygons, though it’s also true that geographically he is much further away from them than the poor sod who had his brain eaten. Once again Capaldi seems very happy about this, relaxed and on his game. No wonder he doesn’t seem to be in much hurry to move on having apparently signed for his third season.

The Time Lord's attitude to Osgood’s interesting though, oscillating between wariness and warmth. The treatment of her return is especially well handled, helping to shore up the idea that not all Zygons are evil or at least no less capable of evil than humanity by making the notion of whether the Zygon or human version died at Missy’s hands largely irrelevant (although I think it’s implied that as fans assumed it was the former). Ingrid Oliver continues to impress. Even in her introductory story, a character that pre-publicity indicated was going to be the revival’s equivalent of Whiz-Kid, parodying fans, is instead a love letter to them, to us, and Oliver’s tapped into that, though it’s notable that her adorkableness has sharp edges on this occasion for obvious reasons. The question marks on her lapel have newer resonance.

It’s close to midnight so perhaps I should start closing out but not without mentioning the whole Clara business. The companion substitution here is handle much better here than in either New Earth of The Sontaran Stratagem with elements such as the conversation about Truth or Consequences which previously seemed like a fairly typically explanation for sudden companion insight ala 42 now revealed to be part of the Zygon plan. The critics who simply don’t like Jenna Coleman won’t be convinced by any of her superb work here but the subtlety with which she indicates this different version on a second watch is startling. She’s both Clara and also somehow not. The look she gives on realising that she’s been uncovered is utterly mind bending, right up there with Sarah Clarke’s Nina Myers as she gazes through the security feed in CTU on 24.

Not all of the episode works; some of the points are belaboured and the mechanics of just how all of these Zygons could exist secretly within the population not entirely explained convincingly. But this is the kind of story in which everyone on the production team is engaged, especially Murray Gold, laying in a version of Clara’s theme just before her substitution, notes which go entirely unheard for the rest of the episode. Director Daniel Nettheim (whose previously helmed four episodes of K9!) takes full advantage of wide angle lenses in orbit of the Zygons, entirely unafraid to show us their rubber visages.  Then it ends on a really solid cliffhanger.  My guess is that Kate's playing fake Clara at her own game and pretending to be a Zygon.  Let's see shall we?

I'm 40.

Spicing.

The Queen in East Sussex, a photo by The British Monarchy on Flickr.

"Your memories"

"Described as "a freakish Halloween party", Led Zeppelin celebrate the UK launch of their Swan Song record label at Chislehurst Caves in Kent. Strippers, magicians, fire-eaters entertained guests which included: Roy Harper, label mates Bad Company and The Pretty Things, along with an assortment of press."



"Widely credited as the man who was the first magician to mainstream magic on television, Mr. Mark Wilson is our guest on ths edition of the Magic Newswire's "Spirit of Magic" podcast. This is the first of a multi-part interview that we'll be producing with Mark's help exploring his career, thoughts, ideas an philosophies as they relate to magic, both on television and on stage."



"Anyway, the Night (of the Blood-Stalker) in question takes place in Tomb of Dracula #25, by the unparalleled team of Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan, and you could make a pretty good case for it being the single best issue of the run. It’s a pretty good place to start if you’re new to the series, too. Like most Bronze Age Marvel Comics, Tomb of Dracula was wrapped up in all these long, soap-operatic plots, except that things were complicated more than a little bit by the book starting with a different idea than it ended up with."

What will the next Star Wars films be about?

Film With everything else which is going on, entertainment news has become less and less interesting or important these past few days. Which isn’t to say I haven’t been paying attention and indeed I thought the most exciting news was that Bryan Singer is stepping in to direct the new X-Men film and that James Mangold's The Wolverine is to be a semi-sequel to the trilogy he started. If he could go in and attempt to turn The Last Stand into the film with his opening two promised I’d be even happier. But then …

Disney owns Lucasfilm. Disney owns Lucasfilm. Or as this has been more correctly described Disney owns Star Wars. Disney owns Star Wars. The more we say this, the weirder it sounds, and yet, to listening to George last night, it’s almost as though this was always the plan and certainly the number of ancillary crossovers across the years, especially the Star Tours ride appearing at Disneyland, that this was always going to be his retirement plan.

Which is fine. Everyone was pretty cautious when Disney bought Marvel Comics and then they surprised everyone by making film versions of secondary characters which were far better than what was being churned out by other studios for the A-listers (let’s be honest, only Spiderman 2 is really any good), even if they then royally fucked up the European home release of The Avengers. But the films are amazing and under Joss will continue to be.

Which is why their announcement of three new Star Wars films has to be good news, hasn’t it? Hasn’t it? Well … there’s been a mass of talk online as you might expect, the global echo chamber trying to divine what it can from the press release and the interview clips with Lucas that seem mainly to exist to demonstrate this whole thing hasn’t been an elaborate hoax. What will be in these films? Who will be in these films?

Let’s ruminate.

Given that they’re calling them Episodes VII, VIII and IX, we know they’re not going to be a reboot, a remake or yet more prequels set in the old, old republic which is a shame because that would have been my first choice. Start from the beginning, dramatise the origins of the Jedi and the Sith, create a story that’s well away from the story of the Skywalkers which was pretty much completed, for better or worse in I to VI which work pretty well as a closed narrative.

But they’re opening up the narrative again, which means looking at creating whole new story to add to the back end. Fans of the Expanded Universe know this isn’t such a stupid idea as they’ve watched the characters from the films enter middle age and have kids and more kids, teen Jedis and that sort of thing (I’m busking) (I haven’t read any of it) (but judging by the Wookiepedia it seems busy) (as is Leland Chee the keeper of the Holocron database thingy).

The Expanded Universe does what any good ancillary franchise material should do which is turn a finite amount of onscreen narrative into something which can be extended, repeated and yes, expanded. So the Star Wars continue beyond return of the Jedi for chronological decades, adding some characters, subtracting others, and proves that it is possible to expand that closed narrative onwards, that there are plot threads worth picking up. From the Timothy Zhan novels on.

But think of the fans of the Expanded Universe at this moment. On the one hand they’re really excited about having some new films. New Star Wars films! But on the other they’ll be glancing at the several hundred novels, comics and whatnot on their shelves and wondering what exactly will still be canonical by the time the new films come out, because its unlikely that whoever’s writing them will give two hoots about some obscure bit of minutia from a paragraph in a novel publish five years before.

And I hope it doesn’t.  I hope Leland Chee finds himself with a massive editing job.  Done properly these will be the nuclear option on the Expanded Universe, tipping most of it  downwards into Z-canonicity or whatever the lettering system is in the Holocron these days. Why should us casuals have to deal with a narrative that’s desperately trying not to step on the toes of a bunch of other narratives and decisions taken years before. The film should be an excellent bit of space opera first.

Which is harsh of course. I could be wrong. Lucas has apparently already written the treatments for these films and had them knocking around for a few decades, though that contradicts what he said to Total Film in 2008 when specifically asked about the Expanded Universe:

"I've left pretty explicit instructions for there not to be any more features. There will definitely be no Episodes VII-IX. That's because there isn't any story. I mean, I never thought of anything. And now there have been novels about the events after Episode VI, which isn't at all what I would have done with it. The Star Wars story is really the tragedy of Darth Vader. That is the story. Once Vader dies, he doesn't come back to life, the Emperor doesn't get cloned and Luke doesn't get married..."

I wish that was true, I wish they were starting from scratch, but it’s possible that as that universe has expanded he’s kept an eye on whether any of it contradicts his wild, unmentionable fantasies of what would be there too much. Though as Karen Traviss discovered to her cost, he’s not averse to deciding that something on screen supersedes the page.

Unfortunately, because of how the Star Wars franchise has developed, Lucas’s successors don’t have either of the other famous options available to them in the fight not to piss off the hard core fans still further, even the ones who forgave George for The Phantom Menace. They can’t simply start again in an alternative reality (Star Trek) or just produce some more and wilfully contradict where necessary because it has never been that interested continuity to begin with (Doctor Who).

If these are sequels, here’s what I hope they’re about. Set them a couple of hundred years after the previous series with the Skywalkers, Han and everyone having passed into legend as have the Jedi, the Sith and everything else. A young woman on some dead moon is eking out an existence in a janitorial position when she’s visited by a ghost. We know it’s elderly Luke. He warns of a terrible disaster which is about to befall the galaxy and she’s the only hope. What does she do? What does she do?

Yes, it’s ropey and derivative but so were the Star Wars films from a certain point of view. It’s a fresh start, it reintroduces the Star Wars concepts within a different paradigm which then has the potential to be as huge as the original films, but importantly it doesn’t attempt to simply extend the Skywalker story past what’s already been resolved, it’s not simply putting the band back together to fight the Empire again.

Unless, and this is the other option, if you really do have to make it a direct sequel, it turns out the second Death Star was a decoy. The Empire’s not gone anywhere and while the rebels were celebrating their victory, there really was an Ewok apocalypse and Endor was turned into a crisp with everyone on it via a second (or third) operational battle station. The next three films are set in the devastating aftermath, with yet another band of rebels hopelessly fighting against the real Emperor and Vader and not the clones we previously saw destroyed, mentored by Ghost Luke.

In other words, oh, I don’t know.  But pity whichever screenwriters and directors are handed this poisoned chalice. I think Spielberg’ll end up directing the first one and the screenplay will be written by someone like Tom Stoppard or the Nolan brothers. Though at this rate it’ll be Andrew Stanton, Tim Story or Brett Ratner with a screenplay by Steve Kloves. When the real answer is, of course, the writers and directors of The Clone Wars tv series and/or Robot Chicken.

Not Zooey.

Journalism The Mail Online mistook me for Zooey Deschanel and all I got was this lousy photo:

"When I saw the article, a friend was searching for photos of Zooey Deschanel and that was the first article that popped up this past weekend - I was immediately horrified. Those photos were godawful! Not only did I not look like Zooey Deschanel, I didn’t look like me. Secondly, how had they found me? Did someone see me driving down Buena Vista Avenue and follow my car? Wouldn’t my car - a beat up old VW Jetta with a USC sticker - alert them to my non-celebrity status? Where had the photographer hidden? That’s one nice camera, it’s right up in my face, but the street was empty. Also, no offense to Burbank, but where I was looking was on the cheaper side, and unless Zooey Deschanel was involved in some ponzi scheme, the girl did not need to live there. How had no one noticed the photographer’s mistake?"

So that's Zooey, Katy Perry, this lady and Anna Friel when she's appearing in Pushing Daisies. At this rate the New Girl parody of the Robert Palmer video will be a go project.

Liverpool Biennial 2012: Static Gallery (30)

Art  This is it.  The end.  Or at least the end of the venues listed in the official Liverpool Biennial booklet.  Thirty venues in numerical order.  There are more on the website and the Independents, so I don’t expect this is really the end of the Biennial for me, but for the purposes of this particular project the Static Gallery signals the end.  I feel like Michael Palin at the end of his Around The World In Eighty Days documentary, where he wants to tell everyone about the things he’s seen.  Luckily for him he’s had a film crew with him.  Luckily for me I have this blog.  I hope it’s been fun.  For you I mean reading about it.  It’s obviously been fun for me.  Obviously.

The Static Gallery is a gallery/office space on Roscoe Lane between St Luke’s Church and Liverpool Cathedral up the road from Chinatown (which is a nice bookend to seeing the other Chinatown near the beginning of the project).  To complicate matters, I did visit the space the night before for Social Media Café which arguably means I failed to do the venues in numerical order but since I didn’t actually see the artwork that night, I’m putting it in the same bracket as Lime Street Station of not having "officially seen", so just as Palin, Phileas Fogg and Willie Fogg managed to reach their destinations on time thanks to the international date line and repeating a day, I've grabbed victory from the jaws of defeat.

*     *     *     *     *

In Just Another Unexpected Guest, artists Adriana Galuppo and Sascha Mikloweit have intersected the gallery space diagonally with a giant solar mirror film wall with a ring of barbed wire across the top in such a way that it's impossible to walk all of the way around it internally.  To walk from one side to the other, the visitor must leave the gallery through one entrance and pass through the other, through the café and down some stairs.  One of the gallery managers noted that’s also true of anyone who happens to have hired the office space on the wrong side of the “wall” and wants refreshment or to go to the toilet.

There’s a questioning verse in the accompanying literature which asks us to question if we know which side of the wall we’re meant to be standing on.  The evocation is of course of great walls in history notably Berlin, though because the reflective surface also distorts our image we could just as well be seeing ourselves in some alternative dimension shimmering due to the transduction barrier.  Move around and the breeze makes the wall quiver and shift about.  This is artwork in which there’s not much to see but tasks us with considering the thematic implications.  I imagine that it changes somewhat when a larger group is in the space.

Of course, because of the way my brain’s wired, beyond the expected allusions, I was reminded of the divide in Big Brother 3, back when it was still a somewhat social experiment and not simply about watching people failing to have sex.  The unexpected twist in that series was a set of prison bars struck across the house creating a class system in which one group of housemates had to live on basic rations while the lucky few were allowed luxury products.  Straight away resentment brewed, with desperation for vices reaching epic emotional proportions as some housemates found themselves perpetually “stuck” in the less privileged partition.

But that’s the problem with walls.  They’re purposefully divisive.  They might provide protection, but if you’re not careful, as is the case with gated communities, they can also divorce a person from the wider population and an understanding thereof.  But this iron curtain is of course perfectly impregnable.  A little too much force and you could fall right through.  Not that we would because this is an artwork and etiquette dictates that we don’t destroy the artwork.  So instead we stand before it and try to imagine what’s on the other side.  Which luckily for me did mean a toilet, a result of once again drinking too much coffee.

I'm 37.

I'm 37., a photo by feelinglistless on Flickr.

"any aspirations either way"

Life I suppose I should say something. I turned thirty-six today, twice the age of an undergraduate and psychologically not much has changed. I'm more self-aware perhaps and world-aware, but basically I'm the same person. The burden of responsibility still yet to properly descend. Not that the eighteen year old version of me didn't exactly have any aspirations either way anyway. As the expected early midlife crisis descends, I've pretty much decided that so long as I'm breathing and still have my higher brain functions along with my questioning genes in fully working order, everything else is a luxury.

I watched The Big Chill tonight to celebrate which might not have been the best of ideas since between the hilarious script and remarkable performances, it's also about how the people who're most important to you and who you could be yourself with tend to move away. Or something. Either way, I said as much in a reply to an email to an old friend who'd only contacted to send her birthday wishes. I suspect the ensuing email exchange will be excellent. That'll teach me to also drink my one beer in the past six months. The youngster who was half my age didn't drink which accounts for my cretinous alcohol intolerance now.

But thanks for all of your birthday wishes via the usual modern interrelated socialist communication devices and apologies for inevitably not returning the favour in the future. The problem with having Halloween as your birthday is that it's fixed target; everyone remembers my birthday. I'm then at the disadvantage of having to remember everyone else's and though Facebook offers the ability to track such things, that doesn't include everybody. Perhaps that's what's missing. Perhaps if I made the effort to remember that one thing (or several dozen things), everything else would fall into place. But I doubt it. We can't all live in a feel good film about friends, with soundtrack nostalgia.

CV.

Life It’s my birthday today. I’m 35.

Regular readers will know that one of the standing rules on the blog is that I don’t talk about work. Recently I've thought about the implications of that and how sometimes when I meet people who read this, how they know so little about me and specifically my career and I find myself rushing through my CV. I’ve also considered the extent which it’s ok to talk about a job once I’ve gone. There has to be a period after which it doesn’t really matter.

And so, because it’s my birthday, because it's this birthday, find below an annotated version of that CV, up to, but not including, my present position, followed by some chatter about what I’d really like to be doing with my life. Some of this may be a surprise. Probably not. There will also be links to relevant passages from the blog in which I’ve previously been so circumspect. Now the full story can be told.

Born
31st October 1974

[Let us fast forward a bit …]

Education

Liverpool Blue Coat School, Church Road, Liverpool
1986 – 1993
GCSEs: English Language (B), Chemistry (C), Geography (C), Graphic Communication (C), Maths (C), History (D), Art and Design (D), Physics (E).
A-Levels: Fine Art (B), General Studies (D), English Literature (N).

[Seven years of study boiling down to a couple of lines of early qualifications. What they mask is that I worked really, really hard to get these grades, didn’t do any of the things which teenagers are apparently supposed to do. The failed English A-Level was particularly crushing because I’d studied and studied and building my critical faculties and making myself understand over a two year period, starting with F grades for essays until I managed a respectable B. Then it was all over in three hours. I was never very good under exam conditions. I did however sing at the cathedral.]

Leeds Metropolitan University
1993 – 1996
BA (Hons) Information Studies 2:1

[This was really a librarianship degree, something which wasn’t entirely clear from the prospectus or the title of the course for that matter. In the second year, they changed to title to Library and Information Studies and you could choose which one you’d like to be awarded. I decided to go with the degree I began with and that’s stood me in good stead. It was during this period – for reasons which will become clear – that I thought I’d like to go into art history so my dissertation was about the censorship and restriction of art – in The Last Judgement, so-called Degenerate Art in Nazi Germany, Socialist Realism in the USSR and the Maplethorpe trial – comparing and contrasting the approaches. To this day I don’t know how I got away with that. Lord knows how I ended up with a 2:1. In 2003 I revisited all of the places where I lived.]

University of Liverpool
1996 – 2000
General Certificate In Higher Education

[After graduating, I couldn’t let go of higher education and learning. So from that autumn right through to 2003, I attended night school courses at the University of Liverpool, some of which I talked about on this blog in the early days. This is combined flexible qualification featured accreditation gained from courses in journalism, Theatre Studies (acting and directing), creative writing, philosophy, history and film studies. It’s here that I met my friend Fani and became the kind of person who is intensely interested in everything because there are so many interesting things to discover.]

The University of Manchester
2005 – 2006
MA Screen Studies (merit)

[Which you can read all about here. Well, most of it. Subjects covered include fantasy adaptation, gender representation in French cinema, classic Hollywood and science in entertainment media (including comics). I was very proud that I’d gone from just about making it into undergraduate university on the back of an Art A-Level to gaining a qualification at a prestigious university, and I’m getting a lump in my throat about that even as I type this. My dissertation was titled “To what extent is 'Hyperlink Cinema' identifiable as a genre and what are the conventions?" for which I received mark of 70%. It was about those kinds of films laced with unusual connections between people and places, which has also been true of my life.]

Employment

Front of house at Studio Theatre, Leeds Metropolitan University.
1993-1996

[A voluntary position ushering. Downside: weird hours. Upside: the chance to watch all of the weird and wonderful shows that would pass through its tiny walls, which included a musical version of Casablanca, some performance art which amounted to the performers stripping themselves naked very slowly then putting their clothes back on and something which wasn’t a million miles away from that joke production in Friends were Joey’s character is abducted by aliens. I also took part in a poetry afternoon were the audience was able to enjoy my prose renderings of The Bangle’s In Your Room and John Lennon’s Imagine, poor things.]

Agency work through Job Shop at Leeds Metropolitan University
1993 - 1996

[My first experience of agency work was at university through their job shop. Five in total. Standing on a platform at Leeds Railway Station for eighteen hours asking passengers if they would like to have a GPs surgery on the concourse (they didn't care). Standing on the corner of a road in Hull with a clicker counting cars during rush hour. Five days at Headingley Cricket Ground clearing the rubbish (which mosly consisted of beer cans) from the stands. One evening on the turnstile at Headingley Rugby Club. Prospective candidate for a Police identity parade. I didn't get chosen. Which was a comfort.]

Telesales Advisor at Legal and Commercial
Summer 1994 (1 week)

[This was complicated. Working through a copy of the Yellow Pages and phoning companies to ask them if they required debt recovery services, working without deviation from a poorly written script. They were based in a tiny office above a shop on Allerton Road in Liverpool and to this day I can still vividly remember the smell of the rooms, a musty mix of nicotine and sweat. This was before the minimum wage so I received £80+commission for my troubles. The problem was that you needed to have been working there for a good long while before you’d developed enough personality capital to come anywhere near gaining anything significant in terms of commission which seemed like too many of those troubles which is why I was only there for one week.]

Door to door salesman at some company on the Dock Road
Summer 1994 (1 morning)

[Another find in the Liverpool Echo's job ads. Going door to door selling a card that gave discounts at local restaurants, the kick being that we didn't get paid unless we sold enough of said cards. Apart from the "interview" I was only in the job for a morning, except an hour and a half of that morning was spent getting to Maghull then the "managers" taking us to the pub for a game of pool. When we eventually got on the road, the reality of what we were doing, randomly knocking on people's doors asking them to spend £15 on a promise became apparent, as did the fact that the public didn't want us interrupting their lives. Eventually the "manager" sent me away on what I like to think was mutual agreement after I suggested the flaws in the plan.]

Information & Library Assistant at Henry Moore Institute
February 1995 – July 1996 (1 year 6 months)

[Sprang from five weeks of work experience during my undergraduate course and was mainly helping to staff the library during weekends and some evenings, even commuting to Leeds from Liverpool every weekend in my second summer at university for just four hours (so I was actually travelling more than working). It’s a library dedication to the study of sculpture and it was here that I decided that I would quite like to work in museums and art galleries which explains my late nineties career path. The work was what you’d expect – shelving and cataloguing but I also reorganised the periodical and journal stock and helped with displays. It was at the institute that I also had my first experience as an invigilator in the Institute’s exhibition space, as security and to liase with the general public, offering comments and information about the work, and in some cases, guided talks. The only person I’ve really kept in touch with from this period, Denise, was the library manager.]

Sales Assistant at HMV Liverpool
Late 1996 (3 weeks)

[I don’t actually remember which weeks these were or all that much about the engagement. It was in the stockroom processing and labelling cds and it’s fair to say it was the second worst job I’ve undertaken. My knee still twinges from the afternoon I knelt over wrongly on the cold concrete service area floor. I'm very pleased that the floor no longer exists having been demolished to create the walk through from Church Street to Liverpool One.]

Librarian at a chemical factory.
Late 1996 (2 weeks).

[Just after university, when was still a member of the Library Association (as it was then -- now it has the rather grander title of Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals) and on their agency books. The one job I managed to get with them was at a small library which was part of a chemical research facility in a factory where I reorganised their journals into alphabetical order. The subsidised cafe was a marvel -- the kind you expect astronauts would have with plenty of food and as much as you could eat for about 10p a go. I was filling in for their usual librarian who had a brain tumour. The things you remember.]

Volunteer at The Blue Coat Chambers
Late 1996 (1 day)

[I can't remember how I ended up doing this, but I think it was through the job centre, because I'd said I was interested in work in an art gallery. It was in the old main space that you came to as you went in the front door -- where the cafe is now. I was thrown in with a group of school leavers on what appeared to be some kind of youth training scheme. I painted the back door.]

Research Assistant at Public Monuments and Sculpture Association
December 1996 – December 1999 (3 years 1 month)

[I’d finished at HMV and decided I needed to gain some experience. So I wrote the Walker Art Gallery, and Edward Morris suggested I join this fascinating national research project attempting to create a central source of information of historical and curatorial information concerning public monuments and sculpture. That involved extensive desk research work in libraries and public record offices in the Warrington and Wirral areas with the information ultimately appearing in a national database and eventually, hopefully, a volume just like these.]

Poll Clerk at Parliamentary, Local and European Elections
1 May 1997 - (I've lost count)

[I was literally on the telephone to the council's election office as soon as John Major stood outside 10 Downing Street to make his announcement about "going to the country" (or whatever it is) -- I even think they got the news from me. That was going to be a historic election and I knew I had to be part of it, and I've worked the elections ever since. I'm the person who tears out and stamps your ballot paper before handing it to you, and who puts the signs up outside, which can be easy or impossible depending upon the location of the station. Whether the ten or twelve hours in a single room drift by or drag depends upon who the Presiding Officer is.]

Sales Assistant at Liverpool Museum
May 1997 – August 1999 (2 years 4 months)

[In May 1997 for about a year, the museums and art galleries on Merseyside charged for entrance, £3 across eight sites. Which was fairly nominal and still a bargain. We were hired to sell this to the public who’d previously been about to visit for free. Surprisingly visitor numbers increased I think, perhaps because of a clear unified branding. My first proper retail experience this also included working in the museum shop and on the ticket desk and encouraging visitors to enjoy museum activities such as the planetarium and providing information regarding the history of the institution and directing enquiries by telephone to the correct curatorial departments. Of the eight of us who began working there, six had a connection with the Blue Coat School either because we were pupils or through family and friends. Everything is connected etc.]

Documentation Assistant at The Walker Art Gallery
October 1997 – May 2001 (3 years 8 months)

[Undoubtedly one of my favourite jobs. Creation of a combined catalogue and location index of The Walker Art Gallery’s fine art collection as a Microsoft Access database, merging and completing separate computerisation projects that had been carried out over a number of years. The acronym we gave it was SCALIWAG (Systematised Cataloguing and Location Index (of the) Walker Art Gallery) and everyone used it. This was the first time I really employed the internet as a research tool, logging on to the Getty biographical artists website using a very slow dial-up connection. Eventually the database was available for use by the gallery staff and general public who could finally find out instantaneous if a painting was in stock and could be viewed. Just before leaving having completed the project, my the data was readied for conversion to Multi-mimsy, a dedicated museums and art galleries package, and as far as I know, it’s still in use now.]


Freelance Databasing and Cataloguing at National Museums Liverpool
October 1997 – May 2001 (3 years 8 months)

[During my time at the Walker, I developed a reputation for being quite handy with a database and moved about the organisation working on other projects. At the marketing department I cleaned up the data collected from the sales of visitor tickets ready for a mailing list – which was my first proper experience of working in an office for any great length of time. It's worth mentioning that this also led to some more market research, this time asking visitors to the Walker and the Maratime Museum if they enjoyed their visit. In the antiquities department I re-organised their catalogue of objects and verified that the information in the database corresponded to what was in the store.]

All of this work ended at the same time. At one point I was working four different jobs simulaneously, but then I was left with none. With no formal qualification in museums and art galleries I couldn't work out how to continue. It’s then that I decided on the five year plan (which was actually about five years but “the about five years plan” doesn’t sound quite the same). I would work full time in some jobs I didn’t necessarily want to do until I managed to save enough money to do something that I did, which at that point was an MA in Art History. So I cast about for two months I desperately looked about for work, but I was really trained for nothing specific. Then I happened to phone Job Centre Plus and …

A housing repair company.
2001 (I think) (1 week).

[Agency work. What was supposed to be admin work -- sorting files into alphabetical order -- turned into answering phone calls from worried residents trying to find out when their repairs would be done. Seemed to spend the week running backwards and forwards to a manager who would simply take the message and this was my first experience of having to tell people something when I knew absolutely nothing.]

Data entry at an arts funding organisation.
2001 (I think) (1 week).

[Agency work. What was supposed to be entering the details of artists making funding claims turned into helping to reorganise the databasing system in two days and other IT odd jobs.]

Call Centre Advisor at Royal Bank of Scotland Credit Card Centre
July 2001 – June 2002 (1 year)

[Taking calls regarding credit card accounts which included balance enquiries, payments and applications. I began writing this blog a month after I started and it was this job, in Manchester, that I was travelling to during the first salvo of commuter tales. I was commuting for a call centre job. Which meant that I didn’t do much in the way of saving because of the sheer cost of getting to and from work in comparison to the salary – but I decided that it would be good experience for returning to Liverpool and hopefully another, better paid job. Was the perfect opportunity to build my customer service skills and was my longest experience of working in a commercial organisation. Here’s what happened the day I handed in my notice.]

Data Entry at some insurance company in the Port of Liverpool Building
2002 (1 evening)

[Agency work. Checking through car insurance claims and entering the guts of them into a database. Very slow work, since it involved going through a series of tick boxes and making value judgements based on what people had written. We were each given about fifteen. I only managed to get through about three. It didn't help that I know nothing about cars or driving cars or anything related to cars, though no one seemed particularly concerned about that.]

Press Office Volunteer at Manchester Commonwealth Games
July 2002 – August 2002 ( 2 or 3 weeks)

[Providing information to press regarding the Netball Championship; security on touchline advising photographers where to sit; distributing match information on press tribune within the arena. One of the most exciting two or three weeks of my young life. I’d watched these kinds of events on television for years and wondered what it would be like to be there. Initially I was a bit disappointed not to be in the athletics stadium, but then after watching Australia demolish one of the less able teams two days in, I realised that this way I could become a temporary enthusiast of a sport I’d never seen before. As a student of pop culture I was quite excited to be entertained by Heather Small, Roger Black, Steve Cramb and Ted Robbins at the volunteer party and three parts of S Club 7 at the closing ceremony rehearsal (Bradley, Rachel and Hannah). I wrote some more about this here.]

Call Centre Advisor at Nat West
November 2002 (6 weeks)

[Taking calls regarding bank accounts. A bit of a false start this. I trained for a month, worked in the call centre for two weeks then was offered the next job which I’d actually applied for at the same time. A sympathetic manager who knew I wasn’t happy and knew I wanted to move was happy for me to leave without working through my whole notice period. Walked on a Saturday. On Monday I began working at …]

Steward at Birkenhead Balloon Festival
Summer 2003 (2 days)

[Safety and security at a balloon festival, making sure the public didn't drift into the main field and get stuck in one of the baskets or something. Also included telling people where they could park depending on whether they had a blue badge. The more of this I write, the more varied and bizarre I'm realising my CV actually is.]

Call Centre Advisor at Liverpool Direct Ltd.
December 2002 – August 2005 (2 years 9 months)

[This is the call centre for Liverpool City Council, and my section dealt with calls ranging from parking permits for disabled drivers to taxi licensing, neighbourhood services, environmental services, street lighting, pest control and refuse collections, funeral arrangements and council switchboard. I was also process champion, liaising with management regarding ways to improve call handling and departmental connections in areas related to environmental services. I was also 'the voice of Liverpool Direct' and my vocal chord were utilised on the council's automatic payments line on 0151 233 2000. It’s still there if you phone it, my voice in the machine.]

By now, my five years were more than up and I’d also given myself the job of saving what I thought would be enough money to return to university or have a new life (see above). I'd also decided that film was my passion and that was what I'd quite like to study and later have a career in. I actually handed my notice in before I’d found out if I was on the course, that being the only course I’d applied for. What I would have done otherwise is probably one of this life’s greatest cross roads. Imagine my relief when the acceptance letter came through a week later and just a couple of weeks later I’d finished work and was back at university. Then, a year later …

Casual Invigilator at AFoundation
October 2006 – November 2006 ( 2 months)

[Once you leave university, there’s a limbo of a couple of months were you’re not sure what your final mark will be, were you’re still in shock that it’s over and you wait hopefully for graduation. Having tried but failed to find some agency work, this was advertised at Art In Liverpool for the duration of Liverpool Biennial 2006. It was about talking to visitors about the art works, offering safety warnings were necessary. Very casual in terms of work patterns, but I did meet some good people including Leo who you may remember from the One & Other video.]

Card Seller at The Grand National
April 2007 (3 days)

[You can read all about the application process then the job itself, here and here.]

Columnist at Liverpool.Com
March 2008 – December 2008 (10 months)

[Writing the monthly ‘City Links’ column highlighting the most interesting Liverpool based weblogs and websites and contributing previews to the theatre pages. My first paid magazine published articles (unprinted example).]

Reviewer at Liverpool Confidential
November 2008 -

[Which you already know about and can read the fruits using the links here. I haven’t been writing for them for a while because of the mixed up crazy way the taxes are collected and how it impacts on some other things in relation to …]

Library Assistant at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine
April 2007 – March 2012

[Here's the straight beat from my LinkedIn profile:

· Operate counter service including circulation and security systems
· Sort and shelve materials (the library utilises Barnard Classification Scheme)
· Catalogue latest journals
· Process university inter-library loan requests (photocopying articles, post books)
· Create information signs and user guides to photocopying and printing
· Sell merchandise and stationary, issue receipts and cash up
· Assist with the processing of resources, including repairs and withdrawal of stock
· Prepare list of potential purchases for the refreshing of stock
· Receive library post and sort as necessary
· Assist with stock taking of merchandise and stationary
· Ensure all equipment is ready to use at beginning of shift, powered down at end if required
· Replenish paper in photocopies as required and report maintenance issues
· Provide IT support (Microsoft Office / Internet)
· Bind student dissertations and theses
· Reclassification of a specialist historical collection using National Library of Medicine
· Organising dissertation deposit (sorting, reboxing and labelling)
· Attended conference about digitisation of archives]

Doing something at somewhere
April 2007 – now

[Which brings us up-to-date. Incidentally, if you follow me on LinkedIn you can find out what my present job is. It’s just not something I want Google to be able to find, the sometimes evil monster …].

Even though I do want to keep up this Kubrickian mystique as to my current vocation, I will at least tell you what I'm not doing, a sort of fantasy CV. I’ve written a list similar to this before but I think, after all of these revelations it’s worth setting down at least for my own benefit. In my dreams I would like to be …

A critic.

I want to have Mark Kermode’s job, but that’s hardly likely, unless someone wants to be my Simon Mayo. Or just to be working as a critic full time. The problems with this idea is that as Toby Young made abundantly clear on The Culture Show last week, full time critics are a dying breed. The public tend to just want to know if something is worth the money and won’t necessarily pay someone else to find out. Word of mouth has become just as important as word of expert. Plus, I’ve kind of shot myself in the foot by giving this stuff away for years myself. And I’ve no idea how to get in.

Doing this full time.

Being paid to blog, and being paid enough that it’s a wage. I’d be happy to write about anything if someone paid me enough.

Journalist.

Which could mean further training. Feature writing and interviews in arts related fields. Miniature versions of my Off The Telly work. But I think I've missed the boat on this. Most journalists must have a strong academic background and large vocabulary and I don't have either of those. At all. Would a proper journalist use a phrase like "I've missed the boat on this"?

Research.

I like to think I'm very good at research and nothing makes me happier than being given a question to answer, a range of information to collate, a problem to solve and working towards a conclusion. Every job or course I’ve been has had an element of this, be it phoning around various council departments and beyond trying to discover ownership of the bucket sculpture in the city centre (eventually spoke to an old colleague at the Walker Art Gallery) to searching my way through bookshelf after bookshelf, index page after index page at various universities looking for mentions of the films I was investigating for my dissertation.

Google has obviously made some research work obsolete, but it’s knowing what resources are available, which I often do, somehow. I have a fantasy of being as a fact checker in television, film or publishing working my way through scripts and manuscripts making sure that everything is water tight – or for that matter aiding someone who is considering a topic for the first time and wanting to know where to begin. Perhaps this is editorial research. I don’t know. Notice that I've written a little bit more about this subject than the others. Perhaps this is a passion. I don't know.

Travelling.

I'd also be very pleased if I could win the lottery very soon and finally undertake my plan to spend the rest of my life travelling the world or until the money runs out. Why stay in one place when there's a whole world to see?

But that's the fantasy.

Social networking has probably given me delusions of grandeur and I'm simply looking at other people's jobs and thinking how much I'd like that and that I should just get over myself and make do. But having worked so hard for all of those years to get the MA I feel like I'd be doing my younger self a disservice if I didn't somehow repay all of his hard work and sacrifices and didn't try to make something with it.

I'm not sure where this rolling CV could go next, though I suspect the answer is in my own hands, just as it always has been.

to an extent

That Day It's my birthday today, and I've nothing very profound to say on the subject, other than when I first woke up this morning I had a panic attack of sorts when watching a news report about the lonely elderly. The reasons:

(a) I looked at that woman, sitting alone at home, the most exciting thing to look forward to being the mail and hoping that I'll never be like that.

(b) Even though to an extent, right now, I do feel a bit lonely.

(c) At 34, I'll be forty in six years, fifty in sixteen years, sixty in twenty-six years and seventy when I've lived almost as many years as I have already.

(d) I don't feel like my situation's change much overall since I was in my early twenties.

(e) I still need to do something.

In other words, I'm Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally during the crying scene. Which is disturbing. Unless I can trade Billy Crystal for Mary-Louise Parker.

Update Good god that's a depressing post. I've actually had a very good day. Was given a boxset of swing music (Frank, Billie, Nat, Dean, Bing, Ella, Louis and the like) and loads of chocolate, watched some more of The West Wing, went to the Waitrose in Formby and bought some nice coffee, muesli and pasta, had chinese/indian for tea and just saw Tom Baker going quietly even more insane on Have I Got News For You. I'm ok really.

unenviable task of filling in

Radio And the unenviable task of filling in for Jonathan Ross tomorrow goes to ...

Richard Allinson

With night owl Alex Lester shifting into Russell Brand's spot. It's ages since I visited the Radio 2 website. What's going on with Claudia Winkleman's fringe?

Older, looking younger

That Day I spent the day in Chester, actually beginning my Christmas shopping. It's a town that has found an equilibrium between individuality and the homogeneity of high street stores that's happening throughout the country so there are always unusual shops filled with the kind of curiosities that I like to give as presents. There's now, for example, somewhere called The Japanese Shop, that sells everything Tokyo, from Manga to sushi kits to origami to tea sets, all seemingly sourced from the other side of the planet.

Meanwhile I'm one year older although I'm not too worried about that. The other day I was chatting to someone about life and everything about life and listing everything I've done and I slowly realised she was trying to work out in her head how I'd fitted it all in. Eventually she asked, oh so politely:
'I'm sorry, can I ask? How old are you?'
'I'm thirty-two at the end of the month.'
And she looked genuinely shocked.
So I said:
'You thought I was older?'
'No. I thought you were younger. Mid-twenties...'
That was nice.

Noam Chomsky's nose

That Day It took about two hours from waking up on my birthday yesterday to realise that thirty-one isn't that old. It was at about that time I saw the cover of The Guardian's G2 supplement which featured a photograph, a close up of Noam Chomsky which seemed to have been taken to highlight the hairs on his nose. The man has a small forest there. I've seen the tip of my nose and there are folicles so certainly potential but that I'm not there yet made me feel much better. But really what was the photographer thinking? Not very flattering. I unfortunately left the picture on the train back from Manchester so you'll have to take my word for it (unless someone would like to send me a scan and I'll post it). You can read the actual interview here. His nose isn't mentioned.

'I love you Hope.' 'I love you to Michael.' 'I miss Gary.' 'Me too.'

Life It's nine o'clock, three hours left of my twenties, and I'm in a funny mood. I'm standing in the Liverpool Academy waiting for The Polyphonic Spree to perform. I've eaten Jambalaya for tea at the Everyman Bistro. I'm having a debate with my friend Chris about how old I look. I tell him that whenever people look at me and guess my age, they usually say I'm mid-20s. He looks skeptical. So I suggest we ask a random member of the audience. I look about. No one there. Give it five or ten minutes and normal looking couple, she's tall and blonde, he's slightly shorter. A turn to her:
Me: Can I ask you a random question?
Her: Pardon?
Me: Can I ask you a totally random question?
Her: Err. Ok. Yes.
Me: How old do I look?
Her: What?
Me: How old do you think I look?
Her: I can't say that. I mean.
Me: Don't worry. I don't mind.
She looks me over. She looks me over again.
Her: I don't know.
Me: Whatever you're thinking.
Her: 38?
I look at Chris. I look at her. I look at Chris again. 'Thirty-Eight?' I mouth. Chris rolls his eyes. The woman is a bit embarassed. I don't blame her. I lean forward.
Me: It's Ok. I'm thirty in three hours.
Her eyes widen. She starts relaying the conversation to her partner. I carry on talking to Chris. 'That's teach me.' I say. Later, he asks me never to do that again, that it was mean, and tells me it's all downhill from here. He was correct as usual, and it basically served me right. But it did confirm. I'm officially Thirtysomething everybody.

That Day So I'm 29 and I don't feel any different than I did when I'm 28. People ask if you feel different. Well I feel irritated that you keep asking me the same question -- I didn't have that before. Alright so perhaps I'm a bit more cynical.

Actually it was a fairly normal day. For me. Out of nowhere and without any prompting my parents gave me 'The Very Best of Cat Stevens', which struck me as really quite odd because I've never shown any leanings in that direction. But I like music so I like Cat Stevens and it's really, really good. And Father and Son hasn't been ruined at all by certain awful cover versions.

Went to Cheshire Oaks, bought some shoes, bought a shirt. For some reason the latest style in shirt seems to resemble Marks & Spencer's pyjama tops from the 1970s, so I didn't buy one of those. One of the joys of The Oaks was that it would carry end of line clothing at very cheap prices. Now some designer clothes shops have moved in and the prices only seem a bit cheaper than in the high street. Bought a couple of Christmas presents, although I'm all at sea this year in terms of that.

I did manage to pick up an All Saints single from 1995 before the Appleton sisters joined. It's the original version of the 'Let's Get Started' track from the first album, but rawer and strangely, vocally it's just as strong as the later version. Odd that. Not sure if we need the four versions which are on this single though.

Went for a meal in the evening at some restaurant in the middle of nowhere (well, Prescot Road). Honey roasted steak the taste of which is still hanging about the back of my mouth, which oddly isn't a bad thing. My mother is on first name terms with the waitress. Shocking how helpful that can be.

We've got the yearly circus in the field near our tower block again. It's a massive white tent this time, with coloured light back projected onto the inside. Looks spectacular at night. Went to bed with blue light dancing across my ceiling.

That Day I've had a busy day ...

stuart is back for another
stuart is great because
stuart is british karting champion
stuart is not guilty
stuart is high on country's mountain top
stuart is a pharmacist
stuart is february pacific bell play of the month winner
stuart is back for another adventure
stuart is left alone to attend to the plane which he turns on and starts flying around the house in
stuart is carried off against bolton
stuart is british karting champion
stuart is like dolly parton
stuart is now ready to do such rough and tough things as play soccer
stuart is known as "the sailfish capital of the world"
stuart is seen here with his new art tool
stuart is also the director of the columbus optical seti observatory
stuart is depressed that george is angry and that he doesn't have a friend of his own
stuart is experienced in negotiating and litigating cases involving high net worth individuals
stuart is now
stuart is a leading provider of executive search and other human capital consulting services
stuart is joined by his cousin
stuart is currently involved in two research projects
stuart is something of an enigma
stuart is able to travel only on foot
stuart is known as "the sailfish capital of the world" and is rated as one of the best sailfishing spots in the world during december
stuart is pretty hands
stuart is currently one of the top ten downloaded people in the world
stuart is now the highest paid newsletter writer in the uk and his subscribers are fanatical about stuart's monthly missives
stuart is often described as a mystical man with a mysterious
stuart is distinguished to have received one of the first licenses issued by the oshawa airport in 1945
stuart is a graduate of western kentucky university
stuart is a feature writer for several national publications
stuart is ee
stuart is now 70 (err ... 28 actually)
stuart is a mouse who is part of the little family
stuart is due
stuart is in his groove
stuart is ruled out for six months
stuart is dead release
stuart is the experienced
stuart is approximately 11 (give or take a DECADE or so)
stuart is a strong believer in helping to harness the power of the internet for fans and professionals
stuart is sympathetically voiced by michael j fox
stuart is about two inches long
stuart is promoted from deputy advertisement director following the appointment of carolyn mccall as managing director designate
stuart is a diminutive member of the little family
stuart is een pratende muis
stuart is mulling over the limitations of his identity
stuart is forced to make a new friend
stuart is a good role model for kids because he's ingenious and he never lets his differences stop him from doing anything
stuart is a progressive town
stuart is a uniquely positioned community
stuart is "almost a local"
stuart is a research assistant for palatine
stuart is also featured as tom sawyer
stuart is very well animated
stuart is beautiful
stuart is also a master at telling stories about love
stuart is also trying to adjust to a new area ...
[Googlism ... because everyone has to ...]

Time Quiet birthday -- actually feel a year older for a change. Most interesting moment? Going for a meal with my parents. As we were leaving, my Dad was paying, and said proudly:
"It's my son's birthday."
The waitress, quick as a flash:
"Oh -- erm -- I should have put candles in his food or something."
Never underestimate the deadpan power of waitresses.

Me time And that brings an end to tonight's blogathon. I'm off for a few days for my birthday (tomorrow -- yes that's right, Halloween) and a cinema day on Thursday leading into a night out at 'The Pilgrim'. I'll drop something new off Friday. Please don't have nightmares. Do sleep well. Good night.