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There are moment in every fangrrly life, in which an old fandom surges up out of the depths of memory and reminds you of your old obsessions. As, let's face it, all fandom is obessessive. Fan conventions are like Alcoholics Anonymous for culture junkies. And some of us, to switch metaphor abruptly mid-paragraph, are serial monogomists when it comes to fandoms. We adore a series, then we move on. In terms of my fannishness, I am married to Doctor Who but have extra-marital affairs with all manner of fandoms. One of my early, pre-adolescent, pre-Doctor Who even, crushes was on The Professionals.

aw, look at 'em. Rugged, manly men who do handbrake turns in Ford Capris.A chance channel-flick two nights ago slammed me straight into the middle of the series (Need to Know). I'd forgotten how, even in the era when they wore flares, the trousers were very very tight around certain areas of the anatomy. It you ever wonder why I consider Orli and Johnny Depp and all the others as "pretty boys" rather than handsome, you have to realise I had a poster of Bodie and Doyle, arms slung about each other, on my bedroom wall in 1980. That kind of thing leaves an impression. So, having intended to spend Saturday cleaning the house prior to a week long writing session, I...er...cracked open an archive box and pulled out tape upon tape of The Professionals. All recorded off Granada Plus in the late 90s. Watching them provides the double-nostalgia of my beloved Bonehead and Foyle* and their barely hidden slash potential but also of cheap cable adverts from the late 90s. Ah, a time before the damn "calm down dear" advert was sprung on us. Oddly enough, the advert with the blue talking phone seems to carry on regardless (although I'm still not quite sure which company it is).

It also reminded me of something I was grouching about in email the other week: you can't recreate these cult series. They've tried resurrecting Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) (and nearly got away with it), they tried The Professionals. There is a never ending rumour about a film of the Prisoner. So never-ending that I met some young men last weekend who actually thought there had been a film of the Prisoner. A reason they can't recreate these series is not that the actors are now too pretty (although I struggled with the new Professionals - not a broken cheekbone amongst them), or that the times have changed (although you suspect the days when Lewis Collins or Patrick McGoohan could be filmed driving about London in everyday traffic are long gone). No, it's about the filming technology. The Prisoner has that mid-60s grainy, staurated film look. It was also shot assuming a dual audience: those with colour tv sets and those without. Try turning the colour down on your set next time you watch an episode and you can see the contrast design. The Professionals is more muted colourwise, although it avoids the overlit video look of contemporary Doctor Who.

Modern television direction not only directs scenes differently, it uses different technology so it's impossible to recreate the precise appeal of the original when a series is remade. It could almost be as if the different ways of capturing light cause different moods. The whited-out skies of The Professionals scream "1970s" as strongly as the tight crotch of Doyle's jeans. Well, OK, you can resurrect these things, even get the grainy texture vaguely right, but it is always knowingly parodic like the wonderful Golden Lion segment of Tarantino's Kill Bill 2 which delights anyone who has seen too many Bruce Lee films. Let the old cult series fade, still adored by handfuls of fans and talked about towards last orders in pubs in conversations which inevitably end with the "there was acid in the sugar cubes" theory of The Magic Roundabout. Not drag them out and force them to scrub up a bit for the shiny digital cameras.

I'm not sure this will apply to Doctor Who. The great advantage of a series which began when tv drama was still getting used to being pre-recorded, which pushed CSO (bluescreen) back in the early 70s and which showed off Quantel when Bodie and Doyle where still doing handbrake turns in LWT's carpark** is that there is no single visual which embodies the series. There's the allegedly wobbly sets, and the cheap props and all the other cliches, but it was filmed over so many decades, using so many different technical forms of recording that it can't/won't seem odd to see it filmed on digital video.

Now I need to go back to contemplating just how camp Bodie's pink shirt was.




*Note for non-Pro fans: Bonehead and Foyle are Bodie and Doyle's nicknames, due to the fantastic pisstake by the Comic Strip lot (although it was not officially a Comic Strip... film), The Bullshitters.
** I had my first ever driving lesson in my then-boyfriend's MkII Ford Capri.

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Posted @ 2:32 am on Sunday, August 29, 2004
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frequent flyers - I need you!

I'm looking for someone who is going to be going through a UK airport in the next few weeks. There's a book I want in a very specific format and, at present, that format can only be got in bookshops on the air side of airports (i.e. after you go through security). So if you'll be flying out of a UK airport, I'd very much appreciate you picking up a copy for me. If you could do it, please leave a note in the comments.

I will then go into fanatical detail about the book. I tend to go very fussy and pedantic due, I think, to having once asked for Doctor Who: The Invasion (Cybermen, a 'lost' story, 2nd Doctor, written by Ian Marter whose work I loved) and got Doctor Who: The Android Invasion (androids, 4th Doctor, UNIT, written by Terrance Dicks).

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Posted @ 2:23 pm on Tuesday, August 24, 2004
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Back from Discworld. At the moment, all I have to show as inducement to donate to the Sudan appeal is a rather fuzzy b&w photo from the convention press. I think that's from Walk Through the Fire, the most complex song for us as a group. I didn't forget my line. Although Giles had promised to pinch me if I did. And getting applause for it was very odd. There will be more photos later on, and there were video cameras in the room. I think I'm going to refuse to upload any vid footage until we've reached a target sum, but I'm not sure what yet. We raised UKP127 in cash on the day, plus there are over UKP100 in pledges and online donations but I'm going to do the maths tomorrow.

My thanks to the concom for fitting us in, the others for taking up the idea and running with it, and the audience for enduring...

Update: the maths is done. The current running total is £245.

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Posted @ 7:38 pm on Monday, August 23, 2004
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I just know I've forgotten something. Got a staggering 4 or so hours sleep last night, a new 'short time' record for a normal weekday. Obviously, weekdays involving going out, playing mahjongg with bikers 'til gone midnight, gigs, late night trains or any another stimulant-fuelled evening which leads to less than four hours are discounted as cheating. This is a record "too much to do to actually sleep" night.

I worry about my decreasing sleep time: the thing that unfortunately leaps to mind is Thatcher's infamous four hours a night claim and really, if there's anyone in the world, ever, who I can't abide having something in common with then it's her. Next you know it'll be big bows on the front of blouses and bad bouffant hair. And being burnt in effigy. And going completely insane (must have been the lack of sleep). I'd have to dance on my own grave as well, which could be complicated.

I've done everything I can to get the musical ready for Saturday and keep running through lists of stuff to do once at the con. There are posters, scripts, bits of costume. It's not a full production, but we're all going to find our most character-esque clothing. Sadly, I could do Willow in my street clothes. I'm not going to: I'm going to wear the corset Kelly made for me. Giles has tweed, Buffy has leather trousers, etc. The day job deadline is almost over, but getting it done prior to the convention means I was in the office until 8.30pm last night. Luckily I had a sober conversation with the editor about timescales on the novel.

Well, it was a sober conversation once I recovered from accidentally seeing the horses jumping over minature houses at the Olympics. For some reason, I flicked past just as they did a crane shot and my sense of scale was completely thrown by it. Giant horse! Another friend has also been struck by it, describing it as "crazy golf with horses" (mini-golf, for you Americans) and telling me there is a tiny castle on another course. Clearly, this is going to be the bizarre crazy of these Olympics just as curling was the in-thing at the last winter one.

Please visit the musical site and donate - we'll be putting up pictures and maybe even movies of it after the event. Also, if you're reading this - link to us. Go on...

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Posted @ 12:38 pm on Thursday, August 19, 2004
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I finally reached the point today when I switched off my music whilst working. This is a serious sign. I have warned the editor that I may be a touch late with the manuscript but he was drunk, and I was tipsy, and he can't remember the far more serious business of the title of the next Star Wars film which was revealed to him that evening but which he now claims to have forgotten again. I'm concerned that his fervent desire to forget the SW title (don't ask) means he has also blanked my confession re the deadline.

Trouble is, there is no realistic way to speed up: my days are totally solid with some other very ugly deadlines, and I don't have any free free time until the end of August. So now I'm switching off the music to ensure the only sound is the keyboard clattering with quickly formed words. Except, obviously, right now I'm typing this instead of the novel. Argh!!!!

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Posted @ 9:05 pm on Sunday, August 15, 2004
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I've just finished uploading the microsite for a charity rendition of the Buffy musical episode, Once More With Feeling: OMWF :: charity production for the Sudan appeal :: Discworld 2004. All monies raised will be donated to the Sudan Emergency Appeal.

If you're coming to the convention, please come along. We're only mildly panicking about Xander and the henchmen at the moment. If you're not coming to the con, there's a paypal donation button on the site. Donate because you think the idea is insane. Or you like it. Or you think getting a Doctor Who author with very limited singing ability (but some nifty footwork) to play Willow in a musical is humiliating amusing. Alternatively, follow the links and donate something to the Diasters Emergency Committee directly. Or pop into Oxfam and stuff a quid in a box. If you know a Buffy fan, or a Pratchett fan, or anyone else who might find this of interest, please pass it along.

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Posted @ 1:35 am on Saturday, August 14, 2004
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Jon of Rogue Semiotics posted about the fact that del.icio.us changes blogging habits. Rather than hit the B for blogger button, I normally hit the del.icio.us link instead (actually, I use nutr.icio.us in order to get a list of my tags but that may be a little more than you cared to know). He suggests that:

the arrival of the del.icio.us bookmarking service has produced a throwback to the primordial state of blogging - link and comment.
Something I've noticed however, when I look at who else has added a particular URL or even look at the front page, is that del.icio.us users fall into one of two broad catagories: those who comment and those who don't. I suspect that a lot of the people who do comment are using the RSS feed of their links whilst the ones who don't...er....don't. That's not based on any substantial research obviously, or even on any cursory research. As a user, I'm more inclined to follow a del.icio.us link if it has a comment simply because I get a rough idea of what I am clicking on. I guess this all ties back to my obsession with mapping spaces: to me del.icio.us is partially about having an online favourites cache - which I guess is how non-commentators use it - but primarily about connecting people with pages and building a network of ideas.

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Posted @ 9:43 am on Thursday, August 12, 2004
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Went to see Fahrenheit 9/11 this afternoon which delighted me by containing a long quote from Nineteen Eighty-Four at the end: despite the fact I raised the notion that Orwell isn't a simple 'good guy' in History 101, I do feel Nineteen Eighty-Four is worth rereading at the start of the C21st. His analysis of how governments use propaganda and suerveillence to control the population was a running theme in Moore's film, and it's hard not to see that underlying Moore's latest polemic is the same argument his previous films have had: that the poor of America are disenfranchised by the rich elite, hence his us of Orwell's:

The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact.
Of course, that quote comes from the Goldstein book within Nineteen Eighty-Four - an apparently subversive text actually designed by IngSoc to flush out potential revolutionaries. So let's hope they're not watching who goes to see F9/11...

Walking home, I began by thinking about Orwell. Except it was raining and a little chilly so I put on my blazer and realised it was the first time I'd put it on since I got a replacement Number 6 badge (a 1970s or 80s version, identical to the one I lost sometime in the late 80s). What with the fact I was wearing white-soled shoes (converse all stars, not deck shoes) and the fact that the BBC4 repeat season of The Prisoner just finished, I tangented.

Like a lot of people who spent way too much time thinking about The Prisoner*, I've tended towards the pyschological analysis: the Village is in the Prisoner's head, the creation of a paranoid delusional. His fights with the various Number 2s are indicative of his fight with himself. Obviously, that's backed up by the final unmasking of Number 1 in Fall Out. PPH provided a lovely little explanation about why the Prisoner is always "Number 6" or "sir" and not outright identified as John Drake.

In the early 80s, which is when I first watched the show (back when C4 wasn't all t'n'a but understood the concept of minority broadcasting), mapping The Prisoner onto real world politics didn't seem to work: The Chimes of Big Ben seems to deliberately damage the idea that the Village belonged to either side in the Cold War and besides, we had things like Smiley's People and Edge of Darkness as paranoid political commentary. The Prisoner was obviously a pyschological curiosity from the mid-60s. Walking back through town today, wearing my Number 6 badge, I developed an urge to make the 'be seeing you' gesture at the CCTV cameras I passed because I realised that you can invest the Prisoner with a modern political meaning just as Orwell still speaks his warnings. We are watched, filed, stamped. When we buy something using plastic we give our postcode, a number, to identify ourselves. We are given meaningless elections (Free for All) and are expected to provide information to the authorities should they ask (and these days you can be arrested without charge for far too long). We're not expected to want to leave our colourful Village and find out what's going on beyond it. Sadly, we don't get to drive about in mini-Mokes.

be seeing youI can't think of a good conclusion to this ramble. Am I going to start making 'be seeing you' gestures at CCTV? It's tempting, but it would only really be good if lots of other people started to do it as well, to indicate we are all in the Village. Although I wouldn't mind knowing why the old "pop goes the weasel" rhyme is used in the background throughout the series...



*I'm sure the mid-80s repeat prepped the late-80s tv audience for analysing Twin Peaks.

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Posted @ 5:34 pm on Sunday, August 08, 2004
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I've mentioned elsewhere that my day job involves working with museums and that it is not nearly as exciting as it sounds. Thursday was spent at three lovely ones in London, all of which I've added to my del.icio.us museums tag.

The Linley Sambourne House is one of my favourite small museums in London. I am a sucker for domestic interiors which appear to have travelled in time, such as the much more famous (and Georgian) Soane museum in Lincoln Inn's Fields. The Sambourne is a Victorian/Edwardian townhouse which has been fully restored over the last few years. The virtual tour at the website gives you an idea of how it all looks, but can't recreate how it feels to walk through the rooms. Whereas the equally beautiful Leighton House Museum ten minutes up the road feels like walking through a slightly decadent art gallery - and anyone who likes either the Pre-Raphaelites or the Stranglers* should make the trip west to Kensington - the Linley Sambourne feels genuinely domestic. I understand it's open to the public at weekends for scheduled tours with actors in costumes whose scripts are based on archival material, should any London-based readers be interested.


I'm trying very hard not to dwell on the theft of my laptop last night.





*the video for Golden Brown was filmed in the Arab Room. I do always spend the rest of the day singing "texture like sun" whenever I've been there. Golden Brown was one of my first singles, bought for me by a sibling. I do not know if they knew the most popular interpretation of the lyrics or not: it seems a tad odd to be given a song about heroin when you're 10.

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Posted @ 8:35 pm on Friday, August 06, 2004
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I admit it. I am petrified of the dentist. There is a long saga there, involving a bad dentist, a brace, blood and tears, but it boils down to a terror of dentists. I want to scream when the needle goes into the gum and long for the days when they used to give a patient laughing gas. Seven years ago, I happily spent a year in pain from two crumbling wisdom teeth simply so that I could have them and another one (which had managed to grow horizontally along the line of my jaw instead of vertically out of it) out under general aenesthetic. Just knock me out and do the work.

I have a dentist appointment this afternoon. I know there is going to be the minimum of one filling, possibly an extraction as well. I didn't concentrate on my work all yesterday and I fell asleep probing every tooth with my tongue and panicking. Due to the fact you can't get an NHS dentist to save your life down here, I'm going to the NHS 'emergency dentist' at the hospital. The last time I was in a hospital for my teeth, they chipped a bit of my jawbone away in order to remove the horizontal wisdom tooth. My jawbone has a dent in it due to dentistry...

Unsurprisingly, I am a bit nervous.

update: just two fillings! woo! admittedly, one involved so much rebuilding work I'm not sure how much actual tooth is left but I survived. The numbness has worn off so I just need to find the serious ibuprofen and I'll be fine...

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Posted @ 9:50 am on Monday, August 02, 2004
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I am planning to take a load of photos of the public gardens this week but in the meantime here are two shots of the crocosmia in my garden.


crocosmia 1 [click for full image] | crocosmia 2 [click for full image]

Last night C and I drove down to Teignmouth, which is one of those British seaside resorts which isn't actually part of the English Riviera but you think it is. The word 'Riviera' conjures up mental impressions of white-washed buildings baking in the sun, painfully blue sea and sky, beautiful people in classy swimwear and sporty roadster cars (possibly with a small Belgium or a dotty old dear in tweed pottering about solving a murder). Naturally, the English reality, now everyone buggers off to Spain, is crumbling Edwardian hotels, ice-cream, people who really shouldn't be wearing bikinis, suspect safety standards and some grumpy teenagers mooching about. To be fair to Teignmouth, I used to go there on holiday when I was a little girl and loved it, but that was in the final heyday of the English seaside holiday.

However, the weather was gorgeous so we didn't really care. We had chips on the seafront, as befits a trip to the English seaside, and then did a few hours on the door of a friend's school reunion. Taking tickets, suggesting people wore name badges (they always said no, then came back twenty minutes later to get one), taking photos etc. We were disappointed by the utter lack of a slightly bewildered John Cusack.

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Posted @ 12:31 pm on Sunday, August 01, 2004
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