Mad Men

Last night was fairly quiet. I saw an episode of a show called Mad Men about advertising executives in 1960s New York. It was pretty good. I’d never seen the show before but I probably will try and catch it again. I also watched the end of the film Wayne’s World 2, which is a really funny movie. I remember seeing it when it first came out in the cinemas back in February 1994.

Today has been pretty quiet so far. I got to bed late last night and got up late today. I went out to get my grocery shopping. .

Live and Let Die

Last night I was watching the 1973 movie Live and Let Die on TV. When three British secret agents are killed while monitoring the activities of the dictator of a small island in Caribbean, James Bond (played by Roger Moore) is assigned to investigate and finds himself up against a powerful gangster operating out of the island, who is utilising the local’s beliefs in voodoo practices as a cover for his heroin operation. The film is relatively faithful to the original Ian Fleming novel, and has some pretty good elements in it (such as the speedboat chase) and a memorable theme song from Paul McCartney.

Later on I was watching a repeat of an episode of Peep Show, which was very funny. Then I listened to the final episode of The Woman in Black in which the ghostly Woman in Black take a final, shocking revenge upon the lawyer who discovers her secret, and the final episode of Ancient Sorceries, in which the clerk discovers the ancient evil dwelling beneath the sinister little town. They were both really good shows.

Today was my last day at work before my two week holiday! I am not sorry to see the back of the place for the next couple of weeks, I don’t mind admitting. I was originally going to go out for some drinks with my friend Joe to celebrate, but he wasn’t feeling well and had to leave work early, and so I got a six pack of bottles of beer on my way home and ordered a cheese, tomato, ground beef, green pepper and jalapeno pepper pizza so that was really good!

Smoke Alarm

Last night I was listening to the third part of The Woman in Black, based on the Susan Hill novel, in this episode the young lawyer ends up spending a night in the haunted house, searching for the identity of the mysterious woman in black. I also listened to the third part of Ancient Sorceries, based on the Algernon Blackwood story, in this episode the shy English clerk discovers the monsterous truth behind the hotel landlady and her daughter, and finds out that they have their own plans for him. They’ve been really good. The Woman in Black is a full cast radio play, but Ancient Sorceries is just a reading of the story by actor Philip Madoc. It’s good though. He does it very well.

I was in work late today, and the reason I was late was because I was fixing my smoke alarm, which had been beeping intermittently for the past couple of days, meaning the batteries are low and need to be changed. It’s silent at the moment, but I don’t know how long that will last. I won’t be able to get any new batteries until the weekend anyway, so I’ll just have to live with it until then.

Work was really dull again today. There was an Annual General Meeting for the Union, but I didn’t go along. The meetings are always really dull and nothing ever gets decided, also I’m pretty sick of the union anyway. By all accounts the meeting was pretty much true to form and I didn’t miss anything.

Tomorrow is my last day at work before my two week holiday.

The Woman in Black

Last night I was listening to the second part of The Woman in Black, based on the Susan Hill novel. In this episode the solicitor goes to the house of the recently deceased old woman in order to examine her papers but finds himself stranded and has a disturbing encounter with the mysterious, ghostly woman wearing black in the nearby graveyard. That was followed by the second part of the reading of Ancient Sorceries, based on the story by Algernon Blackwood, in which the shy clerk begins to fall for the daughter of the manager of his hotel, and slowly becomes convinced that there is an evil force in the weird little town that is starting to slowly change him. It works really well having an hour of ghost or horror stories on the radio between midnight and one in the morning.

It was a very quiet day at work, with no unexpected announcements or anything. I was listening to a couple of episodes of That Mitchell and Webb Sound on my iPod, which provided some laughs. Also I’ve only got a couple of days more at work before my two week holiday.

I’ve really been getting into using Twitter a lot recently. It probably gets annoying, but to be honest, I don’t care, because I like it. Ha!

From Russia With Love

Last night I was watching From Russia With Love, the 1963 James Bond film, based on the novel by Ian Fleming. It was the second James Bond film, and involved James Bond (played by Sean Connery) on an assignment to meet a beautiful Russian defector (Daniela Bianchi) who has access to a top secret Soviet coding device. However the whole operation is in fact a trap by the deadly spy outfit SPECTRE in order to assassinate James Bond. It’s often regarded as one of the best of all the James Bond films, and sticks closely to the plot of the original novel.

Later on this evening I was listening to the first part of a radio play called The Woman in Black, a ghost story based on a 1983 novel by Susan Hill, telling the story of a young solicitor who goes to a small English town to oversee the estate of a recently deceased client of his firm, but is distracted by the appearance of a mysterious woman dressed in black. It was followed by a reading of the 1908 story Ancient Sorceries by Algernon Blackwood, which tells the story of a shy English clerk on holiday in France who stops off at a small strange village and is struck by how strongly, in both appearance and behaviour, the town’s residents resemble cats. They were both pretty good and pretty effective for late night.

Getting into work this morning there was a notice on the office intranet that there would be a very special announcement on the plasma screen TVs on the landings and the canteen, that everyone in the office would have to attend to, so there was a huge crush on the landings to hear the announcement, but no-one knew how to work the volume control on the TVs and so they couldn’t hear it. So we had to troop down to the canteen, but were kept waiting for half an hour because there were too many people trying to get in. When we finally got to see it, the announcement was cut off part way through, and so we had to read the transcript on the intranet, and basically it was just that everything was carrying on as normal. Absolutely nothing that couldn’t have been put in the monthly team briefings. The only kind of news was that the accomodation review had been cancelled again, for about the fourth time in the past six years. A lot of people were really scared when they heard that there was going to be an announcement, because there hasn’t been much work coming in over the past few months, but everyone was really annoyed by all the mess surrounding it all.

After the Oscars

The Oscar results made interesting reading. Eight awards for Slumdog Millionaire, which has had very good reviews, but I’ve not seen it yet, so I can’t really comment on it. I was really surprised that The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Frost/Nixon didn’t do better though. I thought they were both fantastic films.

Today I went along for my last week of work before my holidays! I was still working in the old office, instead of the regular one. No-one said which office to go to, but I’ve been in the old one for six weeks now and no-one told me anything different, so if they want me they know where I am, I suppose.

I got back home at around quarter past six and had some microwave spaghetti and meatballs which I ate while listening to Just a Minute, a comedy word game, on the radio.

That Mitchell and Webb Sound

Last night I was watching a Doctor Who story from the early 1970s called “Doctor Who and the Silurians”. The story involved the Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee) investigating the mysterious power losses at an underground experimental power station, alongside the strange attacks on members of the stations’ staff. It turns out that the culprits are a race of intelligent reptilian creatures who used to rule the Earth during the dinosaur period but were forced to move underground into suspended animation, until they were reanimated by the power from the station. It was a really dark and quite ambiguous story. The humans and the creatures were presented as being pretty much as bad as each other, with some of the creatures being quite sympathetic characters.

Later on I was listening to a radio adaptation of an Agatha Christie novel called Elephants Can Remember, which was pretty good.

Today I went over to my parent’s house for lunch, as usual. The CD of the second season of That Mitchell and Webb Sound that I ordered had arrived. Here’s what it says on the back of the CD:

“Starring David Mitchell and Robert Webb, from Channel 4’s Peep Show, That Mitchell and Webb Sound is a hilarious mix of satirical sketches and surreal characters that provides a fantastically skewed perspective on everyday life.
Meet soporific late-night DJ Adrian Locket; Peter and Ted, commentators who reveal the murky underside of the snooker world; crime fighter Angel Summoner and his redundant sidekick BMX Bandit; and the obnoxious incredibly posh person who is still unaccountably a waiter.
In addition there’s Numberwang!, the maths quiz that makes very little sense, plus thrilling coverage of people you don’t know buying houses and then living in them, and thinking where to go on holiday and then booking it.
Zany and original, this consistently funny and imaginative series highlights the absurdity of reality TV, politics, chat shows – and milk helplines.”

I got back home at around half past five.

A Really Quiet Saturday

I got up fairly late this morning, probably that last drink last night taking it’s revenge, and basically I’m just having a quiet day.

I went out this morning to get my groceries for the coming week, and that’s pretty much been it so far.

At the moment I’m listening to the radio adaptation of The Twilight Zone.

Birthday Party

Last night I was watching an episode from the latest season of Peep Show. I’ve got every episode of Peep Show so far on DVD, and I’ve watched them all many times. It’s a British sitcom that debuted in 2003 and deals with two flatmates Mark Corrigan (played by David Mitchell) an uptight loan manager whose main interests in life are women, work and history, and Jeremy Usborne (Robert Webb) an unemployed, would-be musician, whose main interests are drugs and women. The show revolves around them and their friends and relations, but pretty much everything in the show is filmed from the point of view of the characters in the scene, and the secret, innermost thoughts of the two main characters are revealed in voice-over. It’s a really clever show and very funny.

Today was another quiet day at work. I don’t know where I’ll be working next week, whether I’ll stay in the old section or be back in the regular section. No-one has said yet.

I got home and then I went out to the 50th birthday party for Maggi (who works at my table in my regular office) at the Limelite bar. I had about three pints of beer. It’s been months since I last went out for a drink. It was that weird thing where there was no-one there that I really knew, but a lot of people who I vaguely knew by sight around the office. It wasn’t really a good party, because there weren’t many people there I could talk to, everyone was totally drunk, and I was feeling really tense, still it was good to get out for a bit. I got a taxi home.

I’m really getting back into using Twitter again. Of course, when I’m in Amsterdam, that will be pretty much how I’ll be doing my blogging.

The Mighty Boosh

Last night was pretty quiet. I was watching repeats of comedy shows on TV, and I watched an episode of The Mighty Boosh on DVD. That was a really bizarre sitcom written by and starring comedians Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding, which was adapted from a radio series, which itself was taken from a series of stage shows. In the first season, which is pretty much taken from the radio series, fashion victim and would-be rock n’ roll star Vince Noir (Fielding) and uptight “jazz maverick” Howard Moon (Barratt) work as zoo keepers in a surreal “Zooniverse” and frequently go on strange journeys featuring talking animals, shamans, monsters and magic. The show featured kind of conventional sitcom elements, animation and frequent musical interludes. The show is usually very funny, and even when it isn’t it’s too bizarre to ever get dull.

My cold is not as bad today as it has been but it is still definitely there, and still very strong. I hope it will go away quickly. of course, it’s that birthday party tomorrow evening. If I feel okay, then I’ll go, but if I still feel like I do at the moment, then I won’t.

It was a fairly dull day at work, but apparently they are planning yet another big desk move. It will be interesting to see in which office I end up when I come back after my holiday, although I doubt it will be uppermost in my mind while I’m in Amsterdam.