So this is Christmas!

Merry Christmas to anyone who still passes through these pages. I hope you all have a lovely break and a tremendous New Year.

Here's a bonus Winterval scene from our local park here in Sedgley.

Happy Christmas!!!

xxx

Snow is falling

Here's the view from the sanctum right now. That's fresh snow falling in case you can't tell. Just when I'd started thinking we were in the clear!

Did you mean: rob stidler?

Search terms, we do love them don't we. Here's some of the burning issues that bring those with a thirst for knowledge to the Island...

overrated noel clarke - Not by me, I think he's great.

Did Leon Jackson see ghostface pictures in the xfactor - Please don't come here again.

I don't know nuffing about no skellingtons - Ah, a Hot Fuzz enthusiast.

how do i stop my door getting jammed when it's damp? - Don't live in Worcester.

steps to follow to survive in an island - Step one, climb out of island...

sicknote facebook - What? Do you need a sicknote if you're not going to sign in or something?

this user has no friends yet - Oh thanks Google, thanks a lot.

richard sharpe jokes - Someone writing an after dinner speech at the Bernard Cornwell Appreciation society annual dinner?

he's not my lover he's my boyfriend - Oooooooooooooookay.

In reality most people come here because they're searching for the Red Planet prize, Springfields lyrics or Charters and Caldicot. But none of those are that amusing.

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On a more serious note this week was pretty disastrous writing wise. Lost a lot of time getting to and from work in the snow. This is really my own fault for a)living so far from where I work and b)living in Sedgley, which is placed upon an atmospheric rift which exaggerates whatever weather the rest of the country is having (If you see a light mist we get a pea souper, bit of drizzle? We get the monsoon. I'd complain but you know I love it really, it's so atmospheric!).

My boss is also off for a couple of weeks so work is a little more trying than usual, I did bear this in mind when planning this months writing work but forgot to account for the worst snow in eighteen years. Schoolboy error.

Luckily all I wanted to do was work up two TV treatments to try and decide what I'm going to write next month, so I can spare one lost week.

Hoping for some feedback on my most recent script next week. I'm also considering sticking it up on Trigger Street but a little foolishly paranoid about copyright stuff.

OK, that's all for now.

Back in (the) Black (country)...

We moved out of our house in Worcester last Thursday and are now staying with my endlessly obliging in-laws until we are able to move into our new home in Sedgley. Assuming, that is, that we are able to move in there. The last few days have seen a flurry of calls from my solicitor as we go into 'mad panic' mode and attempt to exchange.

Should there be no further contretemps we should exchange on Monday and complete in just two weeks.

If anyone was in any doubt I can confirm that buying a house is not the sort of thing I was put upon the earth to do. When I was created I'm sure the Flying Spaghetti Monster was thinking more about who was going to listen to beautiful music, read books, smell flowers and think pretty thoughts, than who would take care of buying houses, using urinals, queueing at Tesco's and breaking down on the M5. It's one of those things that reduces you back to how you felt in school when you realised that you just weren't like everyone else. If you're me, which you are probably not.

Sedgley promises to be a lovely home. Set on high ground, for the Midlands at least, it's prone to fog and to snow. Being situated next to some woods and fields should ensure a plentiful supply of both in addition to great opportunities for walks and photos. There are also a number of small villages nearby ready to be explored and pub lunched, and Wolverhampton just down the road for all city needs (special mention for the splendid Forbidden Planet).

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There is no writing going on. I'm sure that some writers can thrive in writing during stressful periods but not me, as soon as I try and focus on any scripts or short story ideas my mind turns back to the labyrinthine business of completing this house purchase.

I have not been idle however, as I have been reading a great deal of Neil Gaiman. Currently I'm roaring through Under the Eagle by Simon Scarrow, very exciting stuff that makes you wish you were serving in the Roman army two thousand years ago. Perhaps even more so when you're living in a relatives spare room.


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Television wise I'm enjoying The Fixer (a sort of 21st century take on The Professionals), Torchwood (let's hear it for Upper Boat. Still not to be taken too seriously, still sometimes more concerned with style than content but bloody great fun and a massive improvement on the patchy first series), He Kills Coppers (lush 1960's cops & gangsters with the excellent Rafe Spall), and the second series of Gavin & Stacey.

I also finally saw Beowulf which I loved, now why don't they use the same techniques to make a Sláine film?

I regret that I didn't enjoying Ashes to Ashes which I stopped watching two episodes before the end. After weeks of saying 'Am I mad, in a coma, or watching Ashes to Ashes' over the tedious intro. It's a heart breaker because I expected, and wanted to love the show having been a huge fan of Life on Mars. The fact is that if there was a vehicle for the continuing adventures of Gene Hunt Ashes to Ashes was not it. The moment may now have passed.

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Oh, one final thing...

Something's coming...



...but it's at the wrong time. If, like Russell T Davies, you feel that 6.20pm is too early for Doctor Who to start you might like to politely let the BBC know how you feel about it.

Still in Sedgley...

Don't want to curse anything (again) but it seems likely we will finally have a home of our own from next weekend. It hasn't been the easiest process finding a place to live in Worcester but Sedgley has proved a pleasant place to pass a month and we have had the most hospitable of hosts.

As a consequence of having all my worldly possessions in boxes and no desk to call my own it can hardly be said that I've been at my most productive in terms of writing. Somehow balancing my laptop on my knee while I sit in the spare room hasn't been as conducive to the creative faculties as I might have hoped.

Once we're safely installed in Worcester I hope normal service will resume both in terms of the work I have outstanding and keeping this blog up to date.

As long as nothing goes wrong...

Not known at this address...

The relocation fiasco continues apace. The Postie delivered the contract for the new house in Worcester on Friday - great news. Just a few hours later we were informed that the whole thing was off as the current tenant's aren't inclined to move out just yet. They're in the process of buying a house and there has been a delay.

As a result despite the landlady wanting us in, us wanting to move in and the contract being in front of me right fricking now we are unable to proceed. It's been a bit of a nightmare finding a house to move into in Worcester and now this one has fallen through.

This is bone.

Regardless of this bad news my wife and I are spending the bank holiday weekend packing up all of our belongings ready for a brief stay with the in-laws. Emma has now finished her work and will at least be free to house hunt from Sedgley.

Perhaps it will turn out for the best. Parking would have a nightmare and my Mum says everything happens for a reason.

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Two weeks into the new job and it's going well. I'm in Solihull now where the office is based and though we've yet to 'go live' I feel very good about the change of career. Everyone in the office is very friendly and there are certainly worse places than Solihull to work (yes, I am looking at you Cwmbran).

I think I experienced my first ever 'Friday feeling' driving back to Cardiff the other night.

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Not as many blog entries as I might have hoped recently but internet access hasn't always been readily available and dealing with moving house and changing career has tied me up quite a lot. Writing wise I've not found a lot of time to work but am confident that my Red Planet entry will go in on time. I wish I'd been able to concentrate on it more as I believe it's a brilliant competition and a fantastic opportunity but at least I'll have a ready made excuse for not being the winner (if indeed I am not)!

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Some months ago I sent Rik's Records, my sitcom pilot, to the Scottish company The Comedy Unit (responsible for Still Game, Rab C Nesbitt & Chewin' The Fat amongst many other successful shows). I had encouraging feedback from the BBC about the script last year and sent it out again to garner further opinions as much as anything else.

Whilst I was in London I had word back from the nice folk in Scotland and was pleased to see that it pretty much chimed with what Writersroom had said. They thought the script 'started extremely well' but in the final analysis it wasn't really for them. Fair enough and still one to put on the Encouraging Feedback pile! At least no one has told me I have to stop writing RIGHT NOW, yet.

Although it's been a disappointing year on the writing front, having completed only one draft script in the year since I heard back from Writersroom, so much work has been done in changing my lifestyle and work patterns that I hope for greater success when we are settled in our new home.

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Whilst in London I was lucky enough to have the opportunity for a quick pint with a selection of writers thanks to a certain Mr Anopp. Although I only made it for the last twenty minutes or so due to my hopeless orienteering skills it was really motivating to talk to writers about writing and has encouraged me to make more use of future opportunities.

It may not surprise those who know me to hear that meeting a group of writers and presenting myself as a writer left me feeling like I might be exposed as 'not proper' at any moment. Instead I had a very good chat about Red Planet, John Wyndham and, strangely, tills and left feeling buoyed by the experience. I also got to meet the slightly terrifying Piers Beckley, whose blog is a wealth of tips and info for writers. Thanks again Jason, next time it's my round.

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I would love to witter on all night but I've got to go and wrap an awful lot of five-inch Doctor Who figures in newspaper (after sealing their little sonic screwdrivers and so on into an envelope, of course) so it's good night from me.

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning...

A brief note on The Sound of Drums mainly to say that I'll comment in full once the final episode has been broadcast. I normally prefer to consider multiple parters as a whole (yes, I know I covered 'Utopia' on it's own but... my blog my rules, OK?).

I will say though that John Simm's Master is a triumph. A dark and twisted anti-Doctor able to do in one episode what the preceding three series and two Christmas specials worth of villains had failed to do - that is to shut the Doctor up and wipe the grin off his face. This Master visibly rejoices in chaos and destruction. The final close up on the Doctor, old and infirm, restrained by Mrs Saxon and the Master, is the most chilling image the series has yet offered us.

Good luck Martha, please look after him.

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In other news I continue to be totally useless at getting any work done. I intend to get a lot done this week and next week (it's another weeks holiday - yes it's writey-week again!) and hopefully kick start my routine again. Ever since we got the car everything seems to have gone to pot. What the connection is I've no idea.

Speaking of the car I'm driving up to Sedgley to meet Emma on Saturday morning. This will be my longest journey yet. Spare a thought for me with only Mo Dutta to keep me company!

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I got back into reading 2000AD at the start of this year for the first time in nearly ten years. While I've been enjoying it enough to keep buying it there's not really been much cause for me to mention it here... until now.

There are two new strips in the comic, just a few weeks into their run. Both are written by Pat Mills, one of them is excellent. Defoe concerns the adventures of a zombie exterminator in an alternative seventeenth century England overrun with the undead. Defoe is a character who seems to have much in common with the best anti-heroes of the western genre. He is a war veteran who lost his family in a terrible tragedy with a gruff demeanor and a nice line in monosyllabic answers. Such a character translates into this warped vision of historic London admirably and has quickly become the first story I read every week. Sorry Joe.

Elsewhere in the Galaxy's Greatest I've become quite fond of Nikolai Dante though it often seems like little more than an excuse to print nudie drawings of ladies. Judge Dredd has been pretty good and shows signs of something really exciting coming up. Detonator X was dull, Savage was excellent (though he doesn't look like Stanley Baker anymore, which is bad), Robohunter was very funny with beautiful art and Greysuit, that second new Pat Mills strip, is a tedious retread of Mach 1, which was a tedious retread of the Six Million Dollar Man, which was just tedious.

The Megazine's comic content has been outshone totally by it's non-fiction features, interviews and the excellent film reviews. Still the current Anderson story is good and Blood of Satanus III looks gorgeous thanks to the wonderfully wrong, wrong, wrong artwork of John Hicklenton.

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In fact, despite resisting for some years now I've recently been reading the odd comic. I was always more a fan of specific characters in the past so whilst I may have read every issue of 'Tec between about 1986 and 2003 I'd never tried Transmetropolitan or Bone. My slavish loyalty to the Dark Knight has finally been defeated now, thanks to getting burned once too often by DC's (and Marvel's) insistence on crossover 'events'.

It was a great pleasure therefore to enjoy book one of Warren Ellis's excellent Transmetropolitan collection. It's not often something stays with me so long after I read it yet I find snatches of Spider's wisdom flit into my head with surprising regularity. I will certainly be reading the rest of the series and looking for other interesting comics of the last ten years (feel free to offer suggestions).

It's liberating to finally be able to go into a comic shop without buckling under the crushing weight of responsibility that loyalty to certain characters or publishers can impose upon you.

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Finally a note to say if you missed Angry, Sexy and Working Class on Radio 2 on Friday night then you can listen to it via the stations interweb site and should doso at the earliest opportunity as it was excellent. Narrated by Christopher Eccleston it's a series about British New Wave cinema of the late fifties and early sixties. Lot's of soundbites from key people of the period and a timely reminder that British Cinema should not be an oxymoron and certainly shouldn't follow the crowd.

Look out for it on Friday nights at 7pm.