The Journal of the Browncoat Cat

So much for the electric saw. Shook itself to pieces before the job was finished. However, as that meant I only had to hack of one branch with an old fashioned saw, I was quite happy. The Snowball Tree is looking very sorry for itself at the moment. All the large branches have been hacked back so that it is now standing just three foot tall. It needed this major pruning, because it was getting a bit too big and was looking very leggy and also what foliage and flowers there were, where all overhanging into my neighbour’s garden. Hopefully, in a few weeks time, the thing will start to grow like crazy, putting out new shoots and branches to replace what it has lost. Having all the bramble that was choking its lower extremities removed can only help. Although, if I have not killed the thing, it should be back in all its glory until the summer of 2008.

God, I hate bramble. It is only January, and yet already it has started to bud and shoot out a new year’s worth of growth, the stuff I chopped back today was verdant green, whilst most of the rest of the plants in my garden were either winter brown or a non descript resting shade of pastel green. If I am not quick it will be well established in my garden again. In just three minutes with the pruning shears I had removed enough of the vile stuff from the base of the Snowball Tree to fill a recycling/garden waste bag.

Elsewhere in the garden, the lilacs are covered in fat sticky buds, which will be bursting with new life in a few weeks. My sapling is also starting to wake form its winter dormant mode, with a fat bud at the top where this year’s growth will spring from. At the moment, the sapling is five foot tall, and is probably very root bound in he large plastic tub it is growing in. It will have to be planted out by this time next year, so that means that the area of the garden where it will be planted will have to be ready for it even if the rest is not. I am expecting it to reach about 20 foot tall by the time it has fully grown. I would like it to grow maybe another two foot before it starts branching, and then only into a fork of three stems. That way it should have a nice long strait stem for its bottom third, that forks neatly in the middle and then forms a nice branching canopy in the top third.

It has been a long time since I have done anything other than bramble control in my garden, and even longer since I wrote about it in this web log. However, with the inside of my house more or less finished, it is time to move the focus of the renovation of 15, Stuart Street, Treherbert. So tomorrow, I make a start on the garden. Should be fun.

17 Stone 0 lb

Lost 2 pounds this week. This makes me very happy, as I am now back down to what I was weighing before the excesses of Christmas. I suppose that the hard work really starts here.

Way back in the early 1960’s, top Astronomer Fred Hoyle and dramatist John Elliot wrote a drama series for the BBC called A for Andromeda, which spawned a sequel The Andromeda Breakthrough. At the same time they wrote a pair of novels based on the series. Whilst the BBC foolishly destroyed their only copies of both series, the novels survived, and as a teenager, I was highly impressed by them. So, imagine my joy when it was announced that one of the highlights of the Spring/Summer schedule on BBC4 would be a remake of A for Andromeda. I had a silly grin on my face all day.

The story revolves around the discovery of intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe, when a brand new radio telescope picks up what can only be an artificial message. When the signal is decoded, it reveals the design of a supercomputer that is far in advanced. The decision is made to build the computer up in Scotland, and John Fleming, the computer expert from the Telescope is assigned to work on the machine as it is built. Once operational, the computer sets about analysing the DNA of humans and begins pouring out instructions for new medicines and cures based on the information it has extrapolated. It also sets about creating the perfect operator to interface between itself and the humans. The first attempt is a monstrosity that soon dies, the second is a young woman who is christened Andromeda by the team in Scotland, who quickly grows to be an identical copy of a young student called Christine, who died under mysterious circumstances on site. Andromeda may look human, but she is purely logical and has no emotional responses to the events around her. Fleming tries to teach her how to be more human. Someone is smuggling secrets of the computer out to person or persons unknown. By the end of the series, Fleming suspects that the computer has gone wrong and is now more of a threat to mankind than a boon, and seeks to discredit and destroy it.

The role of John Fleming, the computer specialist will be played by Tom Hardy, who was the villain in Star Trek: Nemesis; Kelly Reilly has been cast as Christine/Andromeda. I am a bit nonplussed by this casting, as Hardy seems far too young to be Fleming, and Reilly far to old to be Christine/Andromeda. Although, I cannot argue with the casting of Jane Asher, who is playing the biologist Professor Madeleine Dawney.

It appears that the finished product will be a two and a half hour film rather than six 30 minute episode series. I wonder if it will be produced live, in the style of the recent Quatermass Experiment remake.

Last night was a blast. I went down to the University of Glamorgan to see Mitch Benn the musician and stand-up comedian perform live at the Student’s Union. This was the first time that I had been to an evening event in the Union Building, which was odd, considering the amount of time I was an undergraduate at that University of Glamorgan. I suppose it was because I was only a part time student at the University, so I was semi-detached from the rest of student life.

I got to the Union in plenty of time, and headed down to the Bar to meet my friends. I know I am starting to get old, because honestly, when did they start letting children go to University, all the students in the bar looked so young. I managed to get quite a good seat, sat next to Jill and Ian Golden (Jill works at the UoG and her husband is doing a journalism degree as a mature student there), on a row of bar stools at the back of the hall, so we could see over the heads of the crowd strait at the stage. The golden rule of any comedy venue is not to sit in the front row, because if you do, you are fair game for all the comedians when they appear on stage.

The compare was funny at first, but eventually got on my nerves, as it was basically the same running gag. The first act was extremely funny. However, I was only really interested in Mitch Benn, who was the closing act of the evening.

Mitch Benn is a huge Doctor Who fan and the inevitable reference to the series came ten minutes into the set. I really thought his comments on eBay.com were spot on. I was really surprised how popular the song I’m Going to have to Kill James Blunt was, considering how popular Blunt’s dirge Your Beautiful was last year. The whole room erupted with cheering, and I thought it was just me who hated Blunt. Although I laughed the most at the monologue about the rebuilding of Wembley Stadium.

The big problem was that Mitch Benn was about 35 minutes into his sidesplitting set, when I had to leave to catch my train home. I am sure that he was about to launch into the final song when I had to make my move. Oh well, it is a good excuse to go and see him again. And to add insult to injury, the train was five minutes late arriving at Trefforest Station.

17 stone 2 lb

I have bought myself a set of scales, and intend weighing myself first thing every Friday morning, and publishing the figure here. Comments, encouragement and advice is always welcome.

20six Comments

(24.1.06 12:28)
Good luck! I’m also on the great New Year weight loss regime – going quite well, slow but steady 1 – 2lb a week. Of course, I want instant results but I realise that it’s better this way. And I do feel a lot better in myself. Keep making fat, flour and sugar free cakes (from chickpeas, eggs, sweetener and baking powder plus whatever flavours I want to put in) and now I’m used to the slightly different flavour I’m enjoying them! The thing that’s helping more than anything is keeping a food diary and keeping a calorie and fat count next to it Not going to let myself get as big as I used to be a few years ago ever again!!! And I’ll give you a sweetie as they’re calorie free *g*

(24.1.06 16:55) And then I go and eat cornish pasty and chips on Saturday night. Although I have been a good boy since, living mostly on bowls of Cawl (clear lamb, leek and potato broth) since Sunday.

(25.1.06 17:38) Ahhhh. Now we know where all the pies went. lol.All the best for the diet.

thumped (15.2.06 16:20) keep going. think how much better you’re going to feel.

So, the new series of Doctor Who is finally going to be shown on the SCI-FI Channel in the USA. I have to say that this is not a surprise, as SCI-FI always seemed to be the natural home for Doctor Who. I suspect that there has been a game of chicken going on between BBC Worldwide (America) and NBC-Universal who own SCI-FI, as the BBC originally wanted whoever showed the new series to buy all the episodes of the first series. It looks like the BBC has blinked first, as the deal done with SCI-FI makes no mention of the old episodes.

It strikes me that this deal will help the chances of Doctor Who winning a Dramatic Presentation (Short form) Hugo at L.A.Con IV, the 64th World Science Fiction Convention in Los Angeles this August. The series was a huge success on British TV last spring and in the rest of the World in the months that followed means that it should get at least one story on the shortlist. It also helps that last years WorldCon, Interaction was held in Glasgow, so there will be more Britons nominating this year. I would love to see The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances get the Hugo, but I suspect that either Father’s Day or Dalek will actually be on the ballot.

20six Comment

Kevin Standlee / Website (13.1.06 18:57)
It’s possible that all of those works might get nominated — Best Dramatic Presentation Short Form has room for it. Have you submitted these suggestions to the Emerald City Hugo Recommendations list at http://www.emcit.com/hugo_section.php?rec.htm ?

(13.1.06 23:46) That site does make for interesting reading. However, I disagree with the placing of “The Empty Child”/”The Doctor Dances” in the Long Form catagory, as together both episoded total 88 minutes.

As I was on my way home for tea this afternoon at 4.30pm, I was pleased to see that it was still quite light, not full daylight, but a pleasantly bright twilight.  Only a week ago it was pitch black at that time.  Things are definitely on the up and can only get better.  I hate the dark winter nights, the only thing that make it bearable is Christmas, with all its lights and decorations at the heart of the dark time.

I also noticed that the lilacs and the flowering cherry sapling in my garden are starting to come back to life.  The lilacs are covered in buds, and the sapling is looking less like a sad twig.

The only problem with this time of year is the return of the daffodils and the attendant allergic reaction, but I can life with that.

The final consolidated ratings for the week ending 25^th December, 2005 were published by BARB, and they show just how successful Doctor Who has become. These figures take into consideration facts that the basic overnight ratings could not know about, such as programmes that get recorded and viewed later on. They also use more accurate statistical methods, so they reflect what the people of Britain were really watching that week. What these figures show is that on Christmas Day, Doctor Who stuffed that night’s episode of Coronation Street, getting one million more viewers than the old enemy. I don’t think I can even begin to describe how happy this news makes me. Back in the late eighties, when senior management at the BBC were engineering the end of the original run of Doctor Who, Granada’s finest was an unstoppable ratings machine, getting 20 million viewers per episode, Doctor Who was the sacrificial lamb in opposition, getting about 3 million viewers. This reversal in fortunes is truly amazing.

20six Comments

(12.1.06 18:23)
This makes me a very happy bunny It’s good to see the Doctor kicking Corrie’s butt… Let’s hope things continue in this vein throughout 2006 – oh, and a happy new year to you! 
 

Some of the best books I have read in recent years were The Sally Lockhart Adventures by Phillip Pulman. It is one of four books about Sally Lockhart, and now the BBC plans to turn them into television dramas. The icing on the cake is that they have cast Billie Piper as Sally. I will be the first to admit that I was underwhelmed when she was cast in Doctor Who, but having seen her in that I know that she is going to be excellent in the Pulman adaptations. However, this is the writing on the wall for the character of Rose Tyler in Doctor Who. Although the DW production office in Cardiff says that there is no problem, the Ruby in Smoke will be filmed between Series Two (28) and Three (29), given the way Billie Piper’s star is rising, I will be surprised if she is still there at the end of the series currently in production.