The Journal of the Browncoat Cat

It was announced today, that Welsh actress Eve Myles has been cast as Gwen Cooper, the second major character in the Doctor Who spin off Torchwood. A lot of people on the Outpost Gallifrey Forum have jumped to the conclusion that there must be a connection between this character and Gwyneth, who Eve Myles played in the Doctor Who story The Unquiet Dead last year.I honestly don’t think that Russell T. Davies would be that hackneyed. He says that he created the character of (which 20six have lost in the software update Gwen based on Eve Myles, as she is the actress he wanted to play this character, but I think that that is about as far as it goes. I am now looking forward to this series more than ever.

The very nice piece of artwork, on the left,(which 20six have managed to lose with their upgrade. However, I have rescanned it, although I would rather not have had to go to the trouble,.) is currently on the Doctor Who home page now, featuring Eve Myles with her new co-star John Barrowman standing outside the Wales Millenium Centre down in Cardiff Bay. It reiforces the fact that this series is going to be set in modern day Cardiff very well.

17 Stone 4 lb

I weighed myself on my sister’s scales this morning.  It is exactly the same make and model as my old bathroom scales, so it should be as accurate as mine.  Must try arder next week.

The restoration of 15, Stuart Street, Treherbert is almost complete. The vast bulk of the work was done by Gary and Alun, professional builders, who knew what they were doing. It has taken six years to get this far, mostly because the work was done when they could fit me in, and when I had saved enough to pay for it.

As of this week, I now have a fully tiled kitchen downstairs and a functioning shower cubicle upstairs. There are jobs that need to be done, which should be covered by the ongoing European Union/Wales Assembly Government sponsored Treherbert Regeneration Scheme. All I have to do is wait for Stuart Street’s turn to come up.

In the meantime there are a couple of minor jobs that have to be done as soon as possible. For starters, the wall units for my utility room have to be fitted. The washing machine needs to be plumbed in, which involves knocking a small hole through the outside wall to take the waste water away, something that was completely forgotten about when the hot and cold water supplies for the machine were installed. Then of course, there will be the continual schedule of painting and decorating that is
needed to keep a house in tip-top condition.

It has just started snowing. Big fat flakes falling silently from the sky. Fortunately, they are melting as soon as they hit the ground.  However, if it continues after the sun sets, then it will start to accumulate.  I detest the snow. This development has not made me happy.

Your guess is as good as mine.

This morning there was an unpleasant bang as I stepped onto my weighing scales this morning.  It refused to go any higher than 10 stone and when I got off stuck there.  Normally I only weigh myself on a Friday morning, before publishing the results here.  At least now I have a few days to get a new set of bathroom scales, so that I can continue keep this blog upto date on my progress.

I suppose I should outline my current diet regime.

The cornerstone of the series Babylon 5 was the way actors like Andreas Katsulas made the alien characters they portrayed under so much latex and make-up so utterly believable. There was not a single instant where the mask slipped, and that Ambassador G’Kar was merely an actor reading his lines. So I was deeply saddened when I read on the Internet this morning that Katsulas had passed away, at the ridiculously early age of 59, from Lung Cancer.

“G’Quan wrote, ‘There is a greater darkness then the one we fight.
It is the darkness of the soul that has lost its way.
The war we fight is not against powers and principalities, it is against chaos, and despair.
Greater than the death of flesh is the death of hope. The death of dreams.
Against this peril we can never surrender.
The future is all around us, waiting in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation.
No one knows the shape of that future or where it will take us.
We know only that it is always born, in pain.”

Andreas Katsulas 1946-2006

An article in The Daily Mail caught my eye whilst I was getting the old newspapers ready for recycling in work. It said that scientists had proven that the reason so many women found it difficult to find clothes that fitted them was because designers still assumed that women had the idealized hourglass figure. The scientist quoted in the article said that women had more rectangular figures today because of improvements in diet and better health all round.

My reply to that is what a load of old cobblers. The majority Women have never had natural hourglass figures, they wore corsets go get the curves. The fact is modern clothes designers have not cottoned on to the fact modern women will not “suffer for beauty” the way their mothers, grandmothers and female predessors did, they are far too sensible.

I watched with horror yesterday and the Wales v Scotland Rugby international yesterday as all the Welsh substitutes were used at the end of match. Why, what is the value of an International Cap for playing for less than five minutes? It was a game the Welsh XV had to win well to improve its position in the Six Nations league table. For no reason, the players who had struggled to wrest victory from the Scots over the previous 75 minutes were replaced. As these new players came on, I could see team cohesion turning to snot, and the defence falling apart. The Scots scored two late Tries, and the impressive lead crumbled, with the game ending with the score of 28-18 to Wales. Substitutes are on the bench for a reason, they are there to substitute, as the name suggests, for injured players. Gratuitous substitution for no reason should be outlawed. The same thing happened last week against the English, a minor defeat was turned into a rout through this stupid practice.

Of course, it infuriated my bother-in-law Gary that the men brought onto the pitch at the end of the Game were Cardiff Blues players, and he has no time for that team. I agree with him, playing for Cardiff does not give you the divine right to a Wales Cap. On the plus side, Wales is winning again because players from other teams, who have earned their Red Jerseys are playing for the lion’s share of the game.

20six Comments

Cheryl Morgan / Website (13.2.06 17:50)
One of the reasons that the coaches do this is to keep key players fit for subsequent matches. The last thing that Ruddock wants is for Dwayne Peel to pick up an injury in the last 10 minutes of a game the result of which is beyond doubt. And the reason he could do it is because the results in question were beyond doubt. If the 6 Nations went over to a bonus point system then it would matter a lot more what happens at the end of a game. It wouldn’t make it perfect, but it would help.

Kevin Standlee / Website (13.2.06 17:59) I’m with Cheryl on this. Watching Super 14, I see that the bonus point system has kept a lot of games competitive unless they are utter blowouts, as both teams continue to have something to play for until the end.

I’m sorry, but I really cannot get enthusiastic about the Winter Olympics.  People doing skillful and often highly dangerous things in the arctic cold does not float my boat at all.  However, one thing about the winter games made me laugh, it was the trailler from the BBC.  It showed a man going down the luge track on the correct line, with the narrator saying “84 miles per hour here, your going through”.  It then cuts through to a man going through luge course on the wrong line, with the  narrtator saying “84 miles per hour here, your going nowhere”.  Everytime I see it, on the second run I want the narrator to say “84 miles per hour here, your going home in a big white ambulance.”