The Journal of the Browncoat Cat

So, the Council are having another stab at killing the trees in Church Street.  What sort of retard cuts all the branches of a tree’s canapy, so that it is just the naked trunk remaining.  Well this is exactly what they have done to the trees in Church Street.  It has taken them years to recover from the last time the Council pulled this moronic stunt, I hope they can survive this time.

I cannot begin to say how much I enjoy the new version of Battlestar Galactica. When I was a child, I liked the original series, but I always felt that something was missing. I came to the conclusion, as I got older, that the basic story premise was fine, but that it had been very badly realised. I wondered what it would be like if someone like the BBC bought the rights to the concept, and did it as a darker and grittier series, jettisoning the high camp that plagued the original. Well it wasn’t Aunty who decided to remake the series, David Eick an American producer who took the bull by the horns, an with his partner Ronald D. Moore, set about re-imaging the series with a post 9/11 sensibility.

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Well, that went well.

Last night was the first meeting of the DWAS Pontypridd Curry Club; the Glamorgan Valleys branch of the Doctor Who Appreciation Society. The initial idea had been to move at east one of the TIMELESS meeting every month to Pontypridd, as so many people in that club come from the Glamorgan Valleys and would appreciate the change in scenery. However, after an initial gathering at the end of last December, the idea of an additional meeting per month in Pontypridd was launched. As J. D. Wetherspoons who own the Tumble Inn run a promotion on Thursday nights the call the Curry Club and everyone who supported the idea liked curry, then Thursday would be the night. The third Thursday of the month was chosen as it was unlikely to clash with anything else. I was not very confident about the turnout. The local press loved the idea of a DSoctor Who group in Pontypridd.coverage, in the South Wales Echo, the Pontypridd Observer and the Rhondda Leader, I had even had my photo taken the Rhondda Leader crouching besides my TARDIS video cabinet, holding a couple of books and DVDs. The weather yesterday was atrocious when i caught the 7pm train from Treherbert down the valley. (more…)

I was awoken from my lie in yesterday morning by the postman. He had a parcel for me to sign for. I knew immediately what it was, before I even opened it. It was the statuette of the Hindu god Ganesh that I had bought of eBay. I have wanted one of these for a while now, as I think that Ganesh is such a cool deity. Ganesh has the head of an elephant, as when he was accidentally killed by his father Lord Krishna, the only head that would fit the body of the child that could be found was that of an elephant cub. This is why he is the god of over coming obstacles, if you can survive decapitation, then anything else that life could throw at him is no problem. He is also the god of domestic harmony and at all Hindu ceremonies, he is the diety called on first to bless the proceedings. The statue now takes pride of place in my kitchen, on top of my fridge/freezer.

This month sees an event the local Masons must have been praying for at their Lodge meeting for years. It was announced that Treherbert Infants School is to close at the end of this academic year. It must have given them great joy, that they will be able to buy up the land this scholastic gem stands on, and make a tidy sum building ticky-tacky little houses on the site. Wherever there is a plot of land, nasty little houses built as cheaply as possible spring up like mushrooms on an Autumnal morning, benefiting , but a small minority of Masonic speculators not the community as a whole. The problem is that the school has been on knife-edge for many years. Families are not as large as they used to be. At the moment, we are at a low spot, and there are just 48 children attending the school. Quick as a flash it was suggested that it would be better if the children were split and sent to either of the new Community Primary Schools recently opened at Penpych or Penyrenglyn, after all, these are the schools they will be going to when they reach the age of seven. However, these schools are in the same point in the cycle as Treherbert, they have the capacity because of the low birth rate in their catchment area. What happens if there is a rise in the birth rate in the general Treherbert area? Simple, these new schools will be overstretched. They could have coped in the past, because the schools were designed for their previous catchment areas, they could take the strain, but those places are filled with the children that would have gone to Treherbert Infants School. And of course, there is bound to be an increase in the number of young children in Treherbert, as all these new houses will lead to an increase in families in the area, so the new schools will become very crowded. But not to worry eh, as long as the brethren of the Lodge get richer.

Just before the end of last year, it was decided to start a regular meeting for Doctor Who fans living in the South Wales Valley, as so many of us got to TIMELESS, which is the Cardiff branch of the Doctor Who Appreciation Society. We decided that the best location would be the Tumble Inn, a JD Wetherspoon’s pub opposite the railway station in Pontypridd. It was also decided that the meeting should be on a Thursday, when it is reasonably quiet in the pub, and the chain does its CurryClub promotion. So once the date of the first meeting had been confirmed, on Monday, Ian Golden sent out a press release with the details, and it gave one of my email addresses as a contact point. On Wednesday morning, I was contacted by a journalist from the Western Mail, the welsh national daily newspaper, she spoke to me for about twenty minutes, about Doctor Who, the group that is being started, and why I liked Doctor Who. That lunchtime, I was contacted by a journalist from the South Wales Echo which is the Cardiff and Valleys evening paper, I suppose it is called the Echo because it repeats everything that the Western Mail has already said. Whilst I was speaking to him and trying not to sound like a nerd, my mobile phone went off, and embarrassingly, the ring tone on the mobile is an MP3 of the Doctor Who theme. The person on the mobile was a journalist from the Rhondda Leader, the local weekly paper. It looked as if the Welsh Press had really bitten on this story. On Friday, a photographer from the Rhondda Leader came to my house, to take a photo of me to go with the article that will be in next week’s paper. Also on Friday, a photographer from the South Wales Echo arranged to come up to the Tumble Inn on Monday evening, and take a photo of the group to illustrate the feature that would appear in that newspaper.

Well, a feature appeared in the Echo on Monday, which featured a photograph of Ian Golden, which had appeared on the Outpost Gallifrey web site in December, featuring Ian, Christopher Eccleston (the Doctor) and Billie Piper (Rose). The first I knew of it was when Ian rung me, congratulating me on my regeneration, and choosing to look like him. He then explained about the article on page 23. The piece was not a Pulitzer Prize winning article, but it had all the correct details. The only problem is that it was unlikely that the Echo would feature the same story twice, and I had a horrible feeling that the photographer would not show up. Guess what, not sign of the photographer. A bit of a wild goose chase for everyone who turned up. On the other hand, no publicity is bad publicity.

20six Comments

(14.1.05 07:43)
so was your first meet a success, even without the 15 minutes of fame and glory courtesy of the echo pic man?

Jonjo / Website (14.1.05 17:28) Congratulations and good luck with the group. Just goes to show that fandom is not dead in Wales.

So, Joe Aherne is directing a third episode of the new series of Doctor Who. He must have made an impression on the production team, to get asked back so quickly after the completion of his first job on theseries.  This episode, number 11 has been given the working title Boomtown, I wonder if it will feature any rats.

At the moment, the team are busy on the two part story by Stephen Moffett called The Empty Child. Set in war torn 1940’s London, it features zombies in gasmasks and strange goings on at the Albion Hospital. Top actor Richard Wilson plays the villain of the piece Dr. Constantine.  The British public best remembers Richard Wilson for the character of Victor Meldrew Wilson from the comedy One Foot in the Grave, although he has been in so many things over the years.

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On New Year’s Day, directly after The Vicar of Dibley and before Casualty, two programmes I would rather have major dental surgery than watch, the BBC in all its wisdom decided to show a teaser trailer for the new series of Doctor Who. It is true that I would have been completely oblivious to this event anyway, as I was babysitting my nephew James, and playing a Scooby Doo game with him on his PS2. Just my luck to miss the start of the big build up for the new series.

Down came the Christmas decorations in my house and my mother’s. Most of the rest of the street have taken their’s down. As have the houses that go a bundle over Christmas in the town of Ynyswen, between Treherbert and Treorchy. God, the place looks depressing now. I did however decide that as my Christmas tree will take about a minute to put back in its box it will stay up until Twelfth Night. My house was the last in the street to be decorated, so it makes sense that it will be the last in the street to go back to normal. And guess what is going to happening work tomorrow morning. Thats right, down come the trimmings there as well.
On the plus side, we can wave goodbye forever to those obnoxious sprogs and their Christmas pudding space hoppers from the BBC1 indents.