Something Beginning With Z!

So long away – so little done! Daughter and I went to see W&G Curse of The Were-Rabbit on Sunday. Much laughter and no slow bits. Go and see it. As the Guardian said, it does seem to push the ceiling of its U certificate but no matter.

I seem to have been working continuously, starting the minute I hit the desk and skipping lunch times. It is one of those times when all days seem to run into each other, leading to fear of the future and where it is all going to fit. Having said that, nothing seems to get done. The panic which seems to be all around at the moment is no help either. We are all going to get Avian Flu and start coughing like chickens. Give the fowl identity cards and that’ll stop ‘em! Interesting comments regarding this at the The Woolamaloo Gazette.

Saturday was a good day for documentary (which allowed my wife to get on with her weekly email report to Scotland as neither of the shows below appealed to her). I rang my dad just before the start of BBC2’s history of drawing show and he said he was about to watch it. It was all about comic book art and animation which made me wonder how long my dad lasted. He managed to make it to the end. Interesting that it started with Daniel Clowes – Ghost World etc. The film was good and I have been meaning to read the book. The last comic book I bought was Tank Girl on the back of buying Deadline magazine in order to seem cooler than I actually was.

The drawing was followed by the writing in a BBC 4 Lost decade show about John Wyndham. My wife was actually half listening to this and got a bit annoyed with its spoilers or all the books; she has been threatening to read The Midwich Cuckoos. I did try to persuade her that the intelligent writing was what mattered rather than the splatter-gun of the plot but I think the delights of this very British Sci-Fi are lost to her. While interesting in its revelations of various unknown things about Wyndham, it did simply seem like a long set of drama docs strung together. Nice to see Chris Langham in it (does he ever not work) but not really something that needed to be made. What does need to be made is a version of Trouble With Lichen , a very laid-back book with much to say about tabloid and trash TV culture.