The Journal of the Browncoat Cat

The Doctor’s travelling companion for the new series of Doctor Who was cast yesterday. As mooted back in March, the Three Who Rule (the three Executive Producers, Russell T. Davies, Mal Young and Julie Gardner) have chosen 21 year old actress and singer Billy Piper. My initial reaction was “oh bugger”. I was not pleased at all. Billy Piper is famous for being famous. She had a string of teenybop chart hits in her teens, and then married Chris Evans, the Orson Wells of British Television. However, in the past twelve months, she has put in a series of critically acclaimed roles in The Canterbury Tales: Millers Tale the drama Bella and the Boys and the feature film The Calcium Kid with Orlando Bloom.Executive Producer Russell T. Davies who is the head writer on the new series said that the character Rose Tyler was supposed to be 19 years old, which meant that Billie Piper was the only serious candidate. The other names mentioned were merely a smoke screen. He has enthused about her acting abilities saying on the BBC Doctor Who web site “It was a long, thorough search to find Billie – despite the fact that the tabloids have been touting her name for months now!” Davies said. “We auditioned all sorts of actors – some famous, some unknown – but we’ve now met with Billie three times, and she’s absolutely perfect, and very close to the description of Rose on the page – I think Billie’s 21, and Rose is 19, so that’s a great fit! … Over the course of 13 episodes, Rose will change and grow, and hopefully, we can keep that story going in the years to come.” Apparently the first people to break the news was the Daily Mail which is ironic, considering the embarrassment they suffered when they wrongly announced that Bill Nighy had been cast as the Doctor. In an article about Chris Evans’ financial woes, they let slip that “As well as winning the part of Dr Who’s assistant in the new BBC series, the former pop singer has gained her first starring role in a movie.” Hell I read that article yesterday morning, and it sailed right past me. To be perfectly honest, I had thought that this announcement would have been kept quiet until this Thursday, when the latest edition of Doctor Who Magazine is released. So much for keeping the official BBC licensed magazine happy.

This photograph is from a web search, so I don’t know how old it is, but it shows Ms. Piper as a brunette, instead of the usual bottle blonde. I hope that when she is in Doctor Who playing Rose Tyler, she will have dark hair, it will nicely separate her from the Pop Princess image she had before she married Chris Evans. Since her nuptials, she has cultivated a very frumpy image for herself, I hope that this does not carry over into her portrayal of Rose Tyler. My inner bloke hopes that the current renaissance of mini-skirts and hotpants on the High Street will be noted by the costume department when they come to dressing Rose Tyler, because Billie Piper is a very attractive base on which to work.

Now I know that I am not the tidiest of people, but it is mostly cosmetic. I do not like dirt and there are certain levels that I would not fall below. As a result is my kitchen has to be spotless at all times. The other is that my bathroom is always kept clean. Every week each room gets a basic once over to keep it spick and span. The only problem with Spring Sunshine is that it shows up all the dust and cobwebs that have accumulated over the winter, in all those difficult to reach and awkward parts of a room. So instead of painting this weekend, I found myself doing some Spring-Cleaning. Pulling out the furniture, lifting up the rugs so that everything gets a clean. Ah the joys of owning my own home.

Not that I had much opportunity to do much painting over the weekend anyway, as my sister Carolyn had hijacked all my painting equipment to decorate her house.

Anyway, it looks as if most of my time is going to be spent on the garden for the next few weeks. Something has to be done about the Brambles. In this part of South Wales, temperate oak woodland was the norm before the coming of man. The first stage of any oak woodland is brambles colonising any open ground. As far as the ecosystem is concerned my empty garden, which I have not been able get at whilst building work was underway in my house, was bare earth and this would not be tolerated. Hence the brambles. Out of the domestic garden or agricultural field this is fine and dandy, but inside those settings brambles are a weed and a major pain. Clearing the garden of bramble and then getting rid of all the rubbish will take about a day, so I arranged for someone to come and do an estimate for the work on Thursday morning. He said it would be £600 without the skips. I thought you are having a laugh, aren’t you. I was not expecting the whole job to cost more than £300. So, one the coming Bank Holiday, the whole family is descending on the garden to help me clear it. And then once clear, I will have to make an effort to keep it clear.

I am not by nature a violent man. However, I can understand what would drive people to violence. For instance, I can understand why people want to crucify the liu mang who devised the Sasser Worm. For the last week it has been crippling the public access PCs in all the Libraries in Rhondda Cynon Taff The main problem with the this particular worm is that if one file is left on one PC, then it can recreate itself and re-infect the entire network. This is why the boys in the I.T. Department are having so much trouble getting rid of it. It cannot have been much fun for the people on the Photoshop Course on Friday night. With the computers shutting down for no reason, any work done with the PC gets wiped automatically because of the deep freeze on the hard drive resets the machine to default settings every time it is switched on, wiping any new files added to the hard drive in the process.

One advantage of using an obscure operating system like RISC OS is that no one bothers writing viruses and other associated nasties so I can look at all the problems that M$ Windoze users have and laugh.

And yes, the plural of Virus is Viruses, not Virii as many people believe. In Latin, the word “virus” is an adjective in English it has become a noun, so it does not form a plural by replacing the us with ii as nouns borrowed from Latin would.  The actual definition of “Virus” in Latin is poisonous odour. I suppose the use of the word virus to describe the cause of an illness dates back to the days when it was thought that all diseases were caused by bad smells.

What a complete shower this year’s Eurovision Song Contest was. Even the ebullient Terry Wogan was up in arms about the way the voting went. The Balkan countries voting for each other, the Scandinavians, who had been routed in the semi-finals all voting for Norway and Sweden. It was quite pathetic. What really got me though, was the way that Bosnia-Herzegovina gave Serbia the maximum twelve points. In the name of God why? Ten years ago the Serbs were putting Bosnian Muslims into concentration camps. That is the sort of thing that you do not forgive and forget in less than a decade.

As for the winner, she was possibly one of the worse entries of the night. Wearing leather underwear and cracking whips is obviously what is needed to win these days. It is not so much a song contest as a thong contest.

And so, the sun rose over Wildmill, it was going to be another stunning day. Once everyone was awake and up to full speed, it was decided that to go to the Oriental Buffet in Pontypridd for lunch, and then work of what we had eaten at the pitch and putt golf course in Ynysangharad Park. I am not quite sure why we ended up going inland, as Wildmill is only a few miles from the coastal resort of Porthcawl, which was the original destination. I think the thought of all you can eat food for under a fiver was the deciding factor. Although to be perfectly honest, I think it was a wise move, as the coast would have been packed with daytrippers that day. Russell and Maria had previously arranged to be elsewhere that day, so I waved my hosts for the previous evening godbye and headed off with Nigel to Ponty.

It was the usual selection in the Orient Buffet, but it did not matter, as I love Chinese food. The only thing I am not keen on is the chicken curry. Andy Hill noticed that in the upstairs restaurant, which has waiter service, there is the option to have karaoke with your meal. This intrigued him and he suggested that K1 should arrange a meal there one evening, everyone agreed that it would be a good night.

I think the only people keeping our scores on the golf course were Tyrone and myself. Tyrone did the nine holes in 50, I took 55 strokes to complete them. I am better at the putting than the pitching. It was basically a bit of giggle that filled an otherwise empty afternoon. It was hot, extremely hot, so we ended up not doing the back nine holes. Instead, we went to a pub.

With evening drawing in, we all made our separate ways home. (more…)

My Friends at Kronos 1 organise a party for the Eurovision Song Contest. I had hoped that it would have been in my house this year. Unfortunately, Gardd Lelog is still not in a fit state to have guests, there is still a whole load of painting and decorating that needs to be done. So this year it was down in Russell and Maria’s house in Wildmill outside Bridgend.

On arrival, I had to pick three numbers out of a box. These would be my entries for the sweepstake. The only one I remember was the Ukraine, and that is because they were the winning entry. And then of to the dining room to get some munchies before the contest started.

As usual, they had gone to town in arranging the party. Printing out flags for each of the competing countries. Also a sheet for marking each entry. Each song had to be judged on four categories, Song, Outfit, Dance Routine and Performance. Personally, I would have rather given straight marks out of twelve, as per the Eurovision juries, as some contestants, like the UK’s James Fox just stood and sung with no dance routine, whilst others like the Ukraine had huge choreographed numbers.

Despite the fact that the actual song contest was far below its usual dire standards, the evening was great fun.