New Year’s D’oh!

…yawn…

…stretch…

…is it 2008 already?

…I seem to have slept for the last week. One too many relatives: I’ll not eat another one. After this ‘holiday’ season I need a vacation.

Well, first thing’s first: a happy new year to all you lovely people! And may all your (legal) hopes and desires be fulfilled this year!

I haven’t had much time to think any randomized musings to post… so I thought, ‘what about telling you some New Year’s Resolutions that I’ve made up’. But I don’t… so I can’t… and I won’t. I’m singularly lacking the resolve for such things.

Right so, what I’m going to attempt in the near future:

• Utilize the most excellent script notes from Mistress Lucy’s House of Correction*. Well, those I definitely agree with! That should keep me out of mischief for a while.
• Finish the first of two treatment story things…
• Finish the second of two treatment story things…
• Write a couple of scripts from them… cunning, huh?
• Become the first person in the history of Oscar to win for an unproduced script: if I don’t win this year I’m going to give up writing…
• Finally quit watching TV… I actually think this every year but ‘they’ just keep making it increasingly likely!
• Make loads of money: unfortunately this means giving up proper scriptwriting and becoming an odious slimy porn baron: how hard can it be (oo-er) to write ‘I’m here to fix the heating’… ‘Ooh, that’s a massive tool’… ‘It’s so hot in here I’ll just have to take all my clothes off’… ‘Nice moustache’… and most erotic of all ‘8 litre quad-turbocharged W16 throwing out 987 horses with a top speed of 253 mph and a 0-60 of 2.46 seconds’… started to drift there…
• ...and, of course, I will continue to obey the every whim of the Kitty Overlords...

And a big thank you to Tom for his invaluable advice to this computer illiterate…

By the way, in answer to my recent request for world-peace via the medium of Nicola Bryant, the Beeb showed Blackadder’s Christmas Carol. My mighty bloginess has the power to change things: it will cause nations to tremble! Or am I being hopelessly over-optimistic? Anyway, in this Cassandra-like spirit I shall make some predictions for the coming year…

• There will be more soap operas…
• Their makers will end the pretence of bringing back previously definitively dead characters with ludicrous excuses and a character will return as a bona fide zombie: nobody will notice.
• Serious drama will become ‘just a shining artefact of the past’.
• Andrew Davies will continue to craft fine adaptations; he will take out a copyright on the classic adaptations genre: all will start with an entirely gratuitous sex scene and focus on nubile young women… 71 year old Davies will increasingly seem a D.O.M. (apologies to Dom).
• Catherine Tate, Little Britain and Jam & Jerusalem will continue to be entirely inexplicable.
• Richard Curtis will continue to be a nice chap who writes enjoyable stuff and yet everyone will continue to deride him…
• British cinema will still struggle to break free of its conventions: films that tick all the right boxes; films that tick all the wrong boxes; films in period costume and rom-coms and dramas set in Islington (or similar) which are completely out of touch…
• Jeremy Kyle won’t do the decent thing…
• Sadly, neither will The Sisters Of Mercy…

The Year may play out as follows... but probably won't!

• In January, a critic will finally dare to pipe up that, especially with its new 16 episode series, Shameless is actually just Eastenders with swearing.
• In February, I will fail in my bid to become the first person to win an Oscar for an unproduced screenplay. My failure to give up writing will cause a queue to form at Beachy Head…
• In March, a new Poliakoff drama series will be blamed for a nationwide out break of narcolepsy… later NICE will approve its use as an insomnia cure.
• In April, Big Brother will begin… this time it will never end…
• From May, all the channels on Freeview will continue to change number or completely disappear with a newfound intensity: the first major change will be when all the numbers will be reversed: 23 will become 32, 24 will become 42, etc.; later changes will include moving all the numbers up one place every time there’s an ‘A’ in the month; Channel 12 will start broadcasting every alternate week… This will not make any real difference to anyone** as Freeview is still not broadcast quality.
• In June, Russell Brand will jokingly tell people to jump off a bridge: thousands will…
• In July, Simon Cowell will be extradited to The Hague while…
• In August, the opening ceremony of the 2008 Games will climax with a mass execution of political dissidents (including bloggers), the ritual slaughter of the final Yangtze River Dolphin, the beating of some Tibetans and a cheque being handed directly to the Janjaweed; smog will render many events invisible but still they will be declared ‘the best Games ever’…
• In September, a 3 hour film will be released that features 2 people sitting near motionless, about to talk to each other but never quite manage it… As an Ang Lee film critics will rave: the same would be true if it had been Wes Anderson, Todd Haynes, Alexander Payne and a whole herd of others…
• In October, the US Presidential elections will be cancelled; all pretence will cease and Rupert Murdoch will be crowned King of America…
• In November, an increasingly uncertain Gordon Brown will crack and also hand over power…
• In December, the return of Nicola Bryant to TV will herald outbreaks of world peace…

And finally, I will continue to be nice to everyone…

There’s probably a whole host of other things that I’ve managed to forget… but there's another 12 months to grouse about them.

*That's going to be fun to watch on the search engine results.
**Except those whose analogue signal has been turned off…

Enjoy The Silence

***Note***

This worked for me even if it hasn't worked for anybody else so I'm passing it on for your edification! Maybe I only think it worked for me and the calls dropped off because all the companies simultaneously realised I didn't have any money!

This is a public service announcement. With guitar. Alright, I was lying about the guitar. That’s resting quietly in the other room right now. My wonderful, battered, old, incredibly cheap guitar; so patient, so loyal, so terribly badly ‘played’. And I use the word played in the loosest possible sense of the word!

So, on to the PSA. This applies to UK residents only. Inspired by this post I thought I’d bring the following to your attention in case you didn’t already know it… they don’t exactly publicize it. You may have noticed that there is a tendency for some companies, wanting to try and sell you things you neither want nor need, to phone just as you settle to meals or in the evening when you’ve just sharpened your quill for an good evening’s scribing. Very annoying. I bring you the solution: the Telephone Preference Service. It’s simple: you ring up BT (0845 07 007 07) and register yourself on the list free of charge and Paul has kindly pointed out that you can register online here. After that you are not allowed to be cold-called. By law. Then if they do ring you, you should ask the name of the company and how they got your name/ number then you listen to them squirm and virtually beg you not to inform BT about their multi-nefarious ways. If they are found guilty they are fined several thousand pounds per call.

Since signing up to this service the number of cold calls has not so much dropped as plummeted. It’s down to about one call every six months and given that previously it had been up at the five a night rate I’d say that counts as an improvement! There is only one exception to this: it only applies to calls originating in the UK. However, at present that’s the majority. Hope that’s some help!

…and talking of cold-calling… the other day a young chap rang on the doorbell. Duly, it was opened to him and as he stood on the threshold of the porch he revealed his fell purpose: he was after selling some things…

The first question, would I like a conservatory? Not really, with a North-facing garden it would be less a Summer-house more a refrigerator.

The hopelessly optimistic young chap looked at the uPVC double-glazing not one arm’s length from his very self and thus came the second question…

Had I thought about getting double-glazing fitted? Er, where exactly?

…and so the borderline delusional young man, standing in the porch, came to his third and final question…

Had I considered getting a porch? I must have fainted from the shock for when I came to the night was dark and the young man had long since fled…*

*Almost all entirely true!