Awards rudeness.

david shrigley
Originally uploaded by jamesandthebluecat.

My friend Sass saw this and thought of me. The caption at the top, if you can't read it, says:

"As I go up the steps to receive my award, I wave to friends and family in the crowd."

The rest you can probably make out. I think it's by David Shrigley, so apologies if I'm wrong, or if he doesn't want crudely-photocopied and then scanned versions of his stuff propagated across the internet. Here's the website if anyone wants to see more stuff. And I think he's got some books out as well.

Slug Update: three very small slugs seen heading out of the air vent that is now the only entrance to the bathroom, and heading off in separate directions, at (relative) high speeds, like some kind of sluggy special forces. Or possibly the slug equivalents of hobbits, facing the Mordor of my bathroom.

There's also an empty cat collar half-way up the steps to my back door. Just sitting there. Which so far, has raised a number of possibilities:

1. Three slugs disguised themselves as a cat in order to gain entrance to my bathroom.

2. Local felines have started evaporating.

3. My compost heap got hungry and is
now spitting the grisly remains of its meals a distance of approximately thirty feet.

I was going to stay in tonight, but now I think I might huddle on the back step with a torch and shotgun. I'll probably stretch red plastic film over the torch lens, like they always recommended in the nature guides I had as a kid. Not sure where you get the red plastic film though. This time of night. On New Years Eve. In the middle of space.

Infodump

I've added some scriptwriting sites to my sidebar. Wordplay is a fantastically useful sciptwriting site, put up by Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio - screenwriters behind 'Shrek', 'Zorro' and 'Pirates of the Carribbean', as well as a load of other movies. Including an early version of 'Godzilla', but they explain that. Basically the rest of it was nothing to do with them. Anyway, it's packed with advice, interesting columns from people in the know, and most useful of all, plenty of downloadable scripts and treatments so you can see how the pros lay stuff out. The reason I find this kind of stuff so much more useful than a thousand 'how to' books, is the people giving the advice actually have a final product you can go out and rent. Or more likely, you already have on the shelf.

I linked to John August's site a couple of posts ago. He's the screenwriter behind the new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie, which, obviously, no-one's seen yet. However, he seems to be working on some pretty interesting movies (Tim Burton's CGI 'Corpse Bride' for example), and the blog format means he updates regularly, often answering readers' questions, which is always useful.

And finally, I've linked to the bloc site from the Falmouth College of Arts' Professional Writing course, as I occasionally bump into them in the pub. Which reminds me, they owe me money.

I've just spent an afternoon watching a video of a kid's show that's looking for writers in the new year. No names, no pack drill, and I know they have more writers to interview than slots to fill. It's a good show though, and as I'll be needing a new gig soonish, I need to keep all those wheels spinning. Or up in the air. Or pointing in the right direction. Or something.

Celtic in origin, meaning: a supernatural curse, imposing behavoural restrictions on one until a required task has been completed.

Both my grandmothers are staying in a nearby hotel this christmas, which seems to work quite well. I've got one posh nan, and one cheeky cockerney (i.e. common) gran. Some years we let them battle it out in the front room, like a very slow-moving bout of Pokemon. Posh nan tends to win, as her hearing is failing, so she can pretty much tune herself out, letting common gran's stories about her world travels fall on unhearing ears, like storm waves pointlessly dashing themselves to extinction on granite boulders.

Mind you, they're both very good at Scrabble. I was quite upset to find that the world 'geas' wasn't in my parent's 1982 Pears Dictionary (the patched and torn survivor of many an epic game) as it's a bloody good word and would have fallen nicely (in the Elizabethan sense) upon a triple word score. It's not in my Concise Oxford either, and it's only just in The Encyclopedia of Fantasy (best reference book ever). Sadly The Encyclopedia of Fantasy isn't counted as an official Scrabble resource, which is a great shame, as it does contain the word 'Zu' for which I had fifty per cent of the letters (a 'Z').

Later on we had a go at a jigsaw, which was a bit less fun as it (theoretically) depicted a harbour-style marina (or possibly a marina-style harbour), so that each piece depicted a segment of either white railing, or white guy-rope against a background of blue sky or blue sea, the whole clearly designed by an escaped supervillain from a Victorian penny dreadful. Said supervillain prabably calling himself 'The Great and Terrible Spider' or 'The Tricksy Ginger Devil' or somesuch. I decided to make it my life's work to track this fiend down in his lair and punish him by making him do the middle bit first while I concealed the straight-edgers behind my back, but by then the dog had eaten most of the pieces anyway, so it all worked out.

There was an article in yesterday's Observer about various celebrities' guilty pleasures. Just once in this sort of article, I wish someone would write something like 'wanking off a balcony'. Or 'using my collapsable trebuchet to fling baseball cap-wearers into the jaws of my tamed and waiting alligator'. Or 'racial killings'. But no. Apparently, Ian Rankin likes reading Jilly Cooper novels, while Katie Melua chose 'classical music'.

I hate sellotape, sellotape hates me.

Maybe the reasons chaps can't wrap christmas presents is that basically, we can't deal with ambiguity.

Here's a squarish object, probably book-shaped, and here's some brightly coloured paper. Logically, one should fit pleasingly around the other. Only it bloody bloody disnae. And squashing the aesthetically-displeasing result on the floor with my knee while I try to get wrapping to conform to shape of present doesn't, apparently, help.

Women seem to be much better at recognizing the flawed reality of what is in front of them, and working with it. Whereas men think everything should work perfectly first time and bludgeon it if it doesn't. You'd think this proves that women are better are displaying adaptability than men, making them more likely to last out the system of thinning and winnowing that is the evolutionary process . In fact, it proves that men are more idealistic, and basically noble than women. It's just that the world hasn't quite caught up with this yet.

I'm heading off into town for a pint later, where the full nobility and idealism of blokes should be on full display, especially after being filtered through lots and lots of drink. Girls can be equally scary, but at least there are physiological barriers to them getting their nobs out on the high street.

On my first Christmas Eve in Cornwall, when I moved here at the tender age of eight or so, I remember coming out of a carol service with my parents, and being terribly impressed by three enormously drunk policemen striding down the road to the Moor, holding hands and singing lustily, pausing only so one of them could briefly fall of the pavement (which was a drop of at least three feet). He got hauled up by his colleagues, who winked cheerfully at us, then took their helmets off so they could sing into them for a pleasing 'cave echo' effect as they passed. It was brilliant.

Fortunately I have a built-in safeguard to stop me drinking too much over this period. Over a number of years I have patiently and carefully trained myself to react in a specific manner when in danger of making an utter fool of myself. Basically, after that dangerous 'second pint' barrier, I start to feel a bit tired and go home to bed with a good book.

If everyone could adopt this kind of sensible drinking attitude, what a country this could be.

Of course, the birth rate would be a lot lower.

Next door's comedy builders are back, huzzah!

I'm not terribly good with Rude Mechanicals, and up-country, I'd often adopt the same attitude towards them as I would towards a large and potentially aggressive dog: i.e. smile nervously, mumble something encouraging and edge nervously past.

The rules are different down here though. Everyone knows everyone else, you can say 'hello' to random people out on a walk without them instinctively swallowing their ipod for safe keeping, and policeman adopt a low-paperwork attitude of 'Well sir, you can do that again if you feel you must, but if that were to occur, I would be forced to take you round the back of the station and smash 'ee up'. Of which I thoroughly approve.

And while they're landscaping the garden next door, the builders like to sing Whitney Houston songs in increasingly higher registers, in a competitive manner which ends with birds dropping out of the sky, dogs shaking their heads confusedly, and all my action figures falling off their shelf.

Yesterday's conversation with builder 1, as I left my house:

BUILDER : Here, you ever thought of becoming a gardener?
ME: Well, at one point, I sort of considered-
BUILDER : Only I ought to tell you, there's no fushcia in it.
ME: Hmmm?
BUILDER: No 'fushcia' in it.
ME: Ah.
Pause.
ME: You've waited all day for me to come out of that door, haven't you?
BUILDER: Yes.

I hate not getting other people's jokes. It suggests that the only person in the world I find funny is myself, and that couldn't possibly be true.

The people have spoken. Bastards.

For those not watching the UK Comedy Awards, Green Wing swept the boards, brushing aside all the wannabees, johnny-come-latelies and also-rans, and romping home with every award it was possible to win.

Not really. However thanks so much from all of us to everyone who voted for GW for the People's Choice Award though (and in some cases encouraging their friends, families, and completely different websites to vote as well). I just hope you haven't all been bankrupted by the phone bills and will now spend Christmas sitting round a single candle, staring at a picture of a turkey. We have not have the most fans, but we undoubtedly have the best fans, and we heart you all.

Really pissed off about 'Sean of the Dead' though. The only British film for an age to be not only competent (because that's rare enough) but funny, genuinely scary and A Proper Grownup Film all the way through, and it gets nowt? What the bloody hell was that all about?

Christmas cards, Raymond Burr and monkey trials: second draft

card
Originally uploaded by jamesandthebluecat.

I took down the post that was here, as it had turned into a rather incoherent ramble, even by my standards, which started off being about christmas cards, passed through Raymond Burr (sorry Raymond) and then went off on a sideswipe against creationists. Three topics that might fare better dining with a slight distance between them, rather than being forced to cram together on a sofa and share a meal tray with only one plastic fork. So lets try that again:

Christmas cards first - I decided not to send out Christmas cards this year, as I always forget someone, or give myself a migraine trying to work out if I have a christmas card-y relationship with someone, decide I don't, then get a card from them just as it's too late to send one by return post (the utter bastards). I got a lovely card from Adam (the brave Raymond Burr-style photojournalist behind the Tokyo scoop), and from Summer - my first ever card from the States, which made me feel right special.

I also got this card (shown) from James and Sonia, who I used to work with in Waterstone's. Sonia's a proper novelist now (it's called 'A Likeness' and is terribly good, but I'm waiting for the paperback to make a proper fuss about it). James is a puppeteer, and if you look closely at the card, you'll see the relevance. I didn't notice until I'd had the card on my shelf for a couple of days, but then I did, and had a giggle.

Right, that's Raymond and christmas cards done. I'll do the creationist thing later, but now it's been confirmed I won't be getting Summer in trouble with George Bush, this is what I wrote:

"Summer, with your Science Museum credentials, at some point can you point me in the direction of a really good argument against creationism? It's trying to take hold in schools over here, and as one of my New Year Resolutions, I've decided to have it stopped. I've read lots of Stephen Jay Gould and that other bloke, and Googled about, but if you know of a good site with some basic coherent arguments, let me know, because all I can come up with is 'oh for fuck's sake, grow up' and that's not quite up to scratch."

And gawd bless her, that's exactly what she's doing. I heart the interweb. I truly do.

Behzti

Having very slightly dissed Jeremy Paxman a while ago , I was pleased to see him taking no nonsense at all from the Sikh spokesman defending the actions of the mob who forced the cancellation of Behzti Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti's play 'Behzti'. Full details on the story here.

I do believe the Birmingham Rep were absolutely right to take the play off when told by police they couldn't guarantee the safety of those attending, and I'm glad Neal Foster of the Old Rep Theatre is prepared to take on the play, but you have to be very careful saying things like "I think freedom of expression is more important than health and safety." Presumably anyone who now comes to see the play is aware that there might be physical dangers involved, but the kids who were at the Birmingham Rep to see 'The Witches' certainly weren't. I really can't see that the theatre had any other choice, and if you're going to blame anyone, blame the mob.

Interesting article about the whole matter from asiansinmedia.org, pointing out the ridiculous hypocrisy of the violence.

What's so stupid about this is that if those angered by the play's contents had followed their democratic right to protest, I would have been quite sympathetic. But by mobbing up and roping in a group of angry young men to trash a theatre, all they've achieved is losing a large chunk of the respect many had for the Sikh community, who had always previously been seen as (perhaps sterotypically) law-abiding and hard-working. And making me really really want to get hold of a copy of the play off the Web, so I can read it for myself and see what all the fuss is about.

Silly, silly men.

When suddenly a second robot appeared, turning everything black and white.

b+w
Originally uploaded by jamesandthebluecat.

Their fight ranged throughout the city, crushing underfoot that hotel Scarlett Johansson and Bill Murray stayed at in "Lost in Translation", which was a shame. Fortunately the various Shinto shrines dotted throughout the city remained intact (maybe because the robots knew you weren't supposed to enter the grounds with your shoes on, which was more than Scarlett seemed to know in the film. I thought this might be deliberate, and would turn out to be some kind of symbol of the lack of awareness most Westeners have of the cultures and traditions of lands other than their own, but turned out not to be, because it was never mentioned, although maybe there's a bit about it on the DVD or something). Good film though.

Rah!

robot smash
Originally uploaded by jamesandthebluecat.

Well, there ends another week where I singularly failed to run up any walls and/or set fire to things with the power of my mind.

On the plus side, Adam sent me this photo of a small wooden model of Tokyo being attacked by a tin robot.

Eeeeeeeeevil....

evil
Originally uploaded by jamesandthebluecat.

And here it is. Photographic evidence of the Bathroom of Clammy Doom. I wasn't kidding about the homunculus. See its horrible feet? Only since I last mentioned it, it seems to have summoned some kind of ally, which looks disturbingly as though it's creeping in, not from the house next-door, but from another dimension entirely...

Landlord's repainting the walls with anti-mould paint though, which was very decent of him. And he bought really quite a cool dehumidifier which sits by the bathroom door, humming happily in its role of elected champion against the Forces of Dampness. Which, to be fair, are mostly caused by me taking far too many very very hot baths. I need those baths. It's where I think. And occasionally pass out, calling out weakly for help before the bubbles take me.

I've taken that yellow fungus thing away though. Couldn't bring myself to put it in the bin, so I'm taking it out to the compost heap as part of a controlled release into the wild. Where it will doubtless fester and swell, growing thick yellow tendrils with which to yank me into its gaping maw next time I wander out to the garden to tip in a load of onion peelings. So if I stop blogging for more than, say, five days over the christmas period, could someone come round and just check everything's okay?

Media world seems to have gently shut down for the Christmas period, as everyone heads off to their Brazilian townhouse, to be massaged by a dark-eyed woman called La Diabla, who used to hang out in the barrio with Jennifer Lopez back when she had a proper name and was in cool films with George Clooney.

I think everyone had the flu anyway. So I really ought to use the next couple of weeks to work on my own stuff... but I probably won't. I've got plenty of stuff out there with different producers and film companies and stuff, so I think this might be a good opportunity to to try and live in the real world for a fortnight or so. Maybe try and practice these 'social skills' I've been hearing so much about.

Contagion, Saliva, Magic Swords

Came up to London yesterday for a meeting, only to find half the people concerned have gone down with a particularly nasty flu. If you've seen the beginning of '28 Days Later', it was just like that. Except I went shopping for comics (nothing exciting) and had a very nice cold pasta and tuna salad with green olive, so not exactly like the film. Maybe that'll be in the sequel.

ME: Green olive?
INFECTED: Ooh, thanks very much.
ME: Got a bit on your top there.
INFECTED: Tch.

Popped in to see Agent Ginny and was pleased to hear Buena Vista have read the screenplay and want to set up a meeting in the New Year. Meeting with Ginny first, but they wouldn't tell her any more over the phone. Which I guess is a good thing, unless they hated it so much they want to tell her face-to-face, shaking with rage, their quivering hands holding badly-drawn stick pictures of me being filled with arrows, using lots of red felt tip.

Always be prepared for the worst, that's my philosophy. Although yesterday, my philosophy was 'Always leave a couple of minutes for a lady's saliva to dry properly'. It was a christmas card, nothing funny. Special Agent In Training Rachel is off to pastures new, so good luck to her, and to her replacement Matt, who I intend to bully mercilessly for not being quite as pretty. Although apparently he's very good at his job and all that. Hmmph.

NoTimeToOpenYetAnotherAccount (crazy name, crazy guy) mentioned the Neverwinter Nights computer roleplaying game a while ago. I've never been that into the computer side of rpg's, as they've always seemed a bit, well, artificial.

And then I saw the trailer for the World of Warcraft MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game). At one point, while watching it for the tenth time I realized I had my fingers pressed against the screen in wonderment. So very lovely. Not that my laptop is fast enough to run it, but if I just get a bit more work in the new year...

I know writers are supposed to be motivated by, you know, the desire for truth and beauty and that. I just want to find magic swords and kill stuff.

My Bookshop Hell

waterstone's
Originally uploaded by jamesandthebluecat.

I miss you all, my bookshop chums. But I'm still glad not to be behind a till this Christmas, dealing with rude people. Although to be fair, it wasn't always them. Here in no particular order are a few silly things from the world of the bookshop:

A customer once asked me who wrote 'Bridget Jones' Diary'. And I, to my eternal shame, said 'Bridget Jones'. In a rather patronizing tone. The very nice lady went off with a slight frown, managed to find it regardless and brought it back to pay for it (showing considerably more trust than I'd warranted). She didn't say a word, which made it worse when I realized what I'd said. This was on my first day as a christmas temp (I ended working there for five years), and I like to think it set the tone for a ghastly dance of inefficiency and misplaced anger that followed, only to be equalled by a day towards the end of my tenure. when Lovely Ruth the Assistant Manager caught me A) skiving off the till by hiding in the Comms Room B) looking up pictures of goblins on the internet, whilst being C) on the phone to my agent. Classy.

When m'learned friend Paula went off to work for a rival bookshop just down the road, she was surprised and delighted to discover one day that someone had taken a dump in the lift. The really impressive thing was that the lift only went between two floors, so the pooer either demonstrated remarkably disciplined bowel control, or had brought said nastiness with them. Either way, one doesn't want to think about it too much.

Some woman asking if we had any book about 'Nazzies' for her husband. Or anything on Dennis Nilsen, or 'that other one'. Ah, to spend just one christmas in Thanet...

The woman who asked if we had 'Mervyn Pig's Gromenghast Triology'. And before you think I'm being snotty, I'm really not, as it was a present for someone else, so she'd managed to retain this info after a casual conversation some time ago. Enough information was there to enable me to find the book for her, she was happy, job done. But I like to think someone out there called 'Mervyn Pig' really has written a triology of Gromenghast books, with absolutely no idea someone else has sort of beaten him to it.

slightly sinister

slightly sinister
Originally uploaded by jamesandthebluecat.

Only about three months after everyone else, but I've just found out Ain't It Cool have a link to the trailer for Charlie and The Chocolate Factory. I would link directly to the trailer, but it didn't work. Ain't It Cool is a fine, fine site. They just maybe need a bit less coffee. Still, the trailer does what a trailer is supposed to do, i.e. make the upcoming film look very very cool indeed without actually giving away too much. But Johnny Depp does look very good - and authentically slightly creepy. Always good to have a main character in a kids film who doesn't look like he actually likes kids at all.

(The screenwriter, John August, has a pretty interesting website which is worth a look if you're into the scribbly side of things.)

I reread 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory'' fairly recently (I've been rereading a lot of classic children's literature for my own children's book) and suddenly realized that first time round, I just assumed that the Willy Wonka character was in some way inhuman. Not particularly an alien, or a demon, or anything so specific, but definitely... not human. I'd love Alan Moore to have a stab at children's literature the way he did with The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (the comic - ignore the rather paltry film), which I suppose he sort of has in the 'travel' sections at the back of the comics.

May have to go back and reread 'Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator' now. Mainly for the Vermicious Knids, who I'm now mentally recasting as some some kind of Lovecraftian servitor race. Has anyone yet written a children's book set within the Cthulthu mythos? Now there's a gap in the market...

My two emotional settings at Christmas: rage, and barely-concealed rage.

Remembered I haven't look at Get Your War On for ages. So I went and had a look, and it's still very, very good.

I seem to remember the book selling very well last Christmas, at the bookshop in which I no longer work. For one thing it's in Kent, and I'm in Cornwall, and it's a long way to commute. Commiserations and sypmathy for anyone in the retail trenches this season, particularly if you have to deal with upper middle-class English people, who are all fuckers. Particularly the Canterbury Buddhists, every man jack (and woman jill) of whom should be drowned in a glass tank while I stand outside, flicking through a Dalai Lama calender, drawing moustaches on everyone in a saffron robe. Apart from Martin though, who is A). a Canterbury Buddhist, and B). evil, but to be fair, also C). quite funny.

Organising a number of Mind Body and Spirit events while I worked at the bookshop made me realize what a pile of rancid cock the whole thing was. There's nothing quite as depressing as continually having to make small talk with same group women in stripey handknit jumpers, hauling themelves from talks on crop circles to How to Heal Cancer by Thinking, like, Positively? There was once two Spiritual Healing events accidentally scheduled for the same night, and two separate stairs had to be used, as The Healers had threatened that if they passed each other, physical reparations would have been made, and reciprocated.

Personally I'd like to see Spiritual Healers use their powers in an offensive category, firing lightning bolts, levitating display stands of 'The Tao of Pooh' at great velocity, and setting fire to each other's auras. After that, I'd definitely queue to get my book signed.

There was a certain type of complaining customer in the bookshop, whose complaints you had to listen to patiently and politely, when all you really wanted to say was: Madam, I'm sorry your husband left you, but it's Not My Fault.

Just realized that this week I watched more television on my laptop than on the actual television. Even the laptop tv-watching consisted only of selected highlights from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Which outclasses anything we've got in the entertainment/politics zone on British TV by a million squillion miles. Although British audiences don't go 'whoo' quite so much, for which I'm enormously thankful.

I'm having a meeting with Matt (from Precise Minds) in a bit, as I need to update the writing website. The GW page in particular looks a bit bare, so I want to get Matt so put some nice piccies up. I was casting about for the official GW logo (the title with some flappy wings behind it), and asked Waxed Owl where she nicked hers from, only to find out she made it herself. So she's letting me nick it. I'm probably also going to put up some screengrabs at some point, so thanks to whoever went to the time and trouble to do those. This is all becoming peculiarly democratic...

Oh, and I emailed Searing Idolatry to say thanks for putting up the Comedy Award details, but my email got bounced back, so if someone could say 'thanks', that would be nice.

Stop singing, and THEN we'll feed the world.

... which I saw scribbled in the mud on the back of a van this morning. And talking of Christmas songs, the new issue of WORD magazine has a free CD containing Tom McRae's cover of 'Wonderful Christmastime', which might be the finest ever example of the covers sub-genre of Miserable Christmas Covers.

It really is fantastic. Tom McRae is one of those piano-based singer/songwriters who seems to bubble under at just the right level of fame, so you always feel like you discovered him yourself, and that if you ever met him, he would wordlessly buy you a pint and give you a big hug for spreading the word. Whereas in fact he probably lives in a castle and has unicorns and griffins roaming free across the enchanted forest that forms one tenth of his estate.

Anyway, it's a great cover. How can you not like a christmas song that opens with the lighting up of a fag, a brief pause while Tom considers whether or not to chuck the whole thing and top himself for real, then a sigh as he decides to get the whole thing over with so he can go back to bed?

This is my favourite bit:

"A choir of children sing this song. Ding dong, ding dong, ding-

Massive silence, Tom lights another fag, goes out to check the answerphone to see if anyone's left him a message - they haven't. What's on telly? Christ, it's that bloke who used to be Lily Savage doing a chat show. Is this all there is to life? I'd top meself with pills, but they only sell them in little packets these days, so you have to get one from each shop in town, and frankly if you've got that much energy you may as well get a hobby instead,

Another sigh.

... dong."

+2 Glaive Guisarme

glaive guisarme
Originally uploaded by jamesandthebluecat.

As mentioned in the Futurama commentary (series 3?) which just goes to show that 99% of all comedy writers have played Dungeons and Dragons, which perhaps gives you the qualification you need to drift through real life as really more of an observer than a participant.

Not sure this is an actual +2, but it is quite ornate. So it probably is.

An Umber Hulk

umber hulk
Originally uploaded by jamesandthebluecat.

Not that anyone asked what one would look like. But this is what one would, if anyone had. Not quite my favourite D&D monster, as I always had a soft spot for the Shambling Mound. If you're very lucky, I might put a picture of one of them up later.

I've got loads of work to do. Might go and have another cup of coffee first though.

Fingers crossed.

Well, the Henson company liked the pitch document for my screenplay enough to want to read the real thing, so Agent Ginny sent that whizzing across the ether this afternoon. Henson would be my absolute first choice for the script, as it's basically a creepy-ass fairy story, and might just be the perfect excuse to turn the Creature Workshop firmly towards the Dark Side....

However, since I finished the script, I found out Henson had asked Neil Gaiman to come with more or less a spiritual sequel to Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal, two films I had firmly in mind when I wrote my script. Which caused a week or two of panic, since if a studio was going to spend, ooh, dozens of pounds on a film, they're going to want Mr. Gaiman's, and I can't honestly blame them. Fortunately, the more I found out about his (and Dave McKean's) film, called Mirrormask, the more confident I felt. Similar territory, but a different story entirely, and my script would call for a radically different filming style to his. Which, just from the stills I've seen, looks beautiful. I saw a couple of short films of Dave McKean's at a seminar he gave at the University of Kent, and they were just gorgeous. Buildings melting into three-dimensional layers of text, time warping and shifting as you watched... astonishing stuff. I'm avoiding watching the trailer, as I don't want anything to be given away.

So, initial panic aside, it shouldn't be a problem. Touch wood. Dark fantasy kids flicks are in at the mo, (post LOTR and with some cracking trailers for Unfortunate Events) and if Mirrormask does well, all the better.

I've been sending Romey Loves Jools out as a sample script to a few companies who are looking for writers to pick on new series of already-established shows, and the feedback seems to be quite good. Some meetings being lined up for end of January 2005 anyway, which is when the bulk of writing for Green Wing is supposed to dry up, and what is laughingly referred to as 'the real work' (rewrites, read-throughs, more rewrites, sorting out locations, ac-Ting/filming and then many many weeks/months of editing) begins, when all the writers wander off and occasionally saunter past all this fuss with a sort of bemused look on our smug writey faces. And then six to nine months later we saunter past again, and say things like 'good lord, is it still not ready?' and wonder why we get stuff thrown at us.

Back to the 'wondering where money to pay rent in three months time' thing - I never realized when I started this just how much the 'hard-assed self-employed business person' thing would vie for precedence with the 'floaty creative type wafting about in a nice shirt with an ipod' thing. I very rarely know what's coming up in three months time, and constantly have to try and think six months to a year ahead. Exciting stuff though.

(Just realized that no-one will necessarily know what a 'pitch document' is. It's a kind of one-page precis of the film's story (more descriptive than 'creepy-ass fairy story, but not that much more), with a quick breakdown of who it's aimed at (in this case older kids, teens, their older brothers and sisters, and younger aunts and uncles, and attractive people, and dark-haired people, and people who like Marmite, and people who don't like Marmite... basically everyone in the entire world will like my film, I reckon).

I'm just praying I don't have to go into a room and actually pitch the concept, because on the rare occasion I've had to do something similar, only with television thus far, the English curse of modesty and self-deprecation kicks in (it's the only time it does) and I end up blushing furiously and staring at the floor and saying 'Gosh, well, it seemed quite clever when I wrote it, but now, I dunno, you all know so much more about this kind of thing than me,' and so on. And people start getting out their mobiles and talking to each other and I realize that That's It, and the Meeting's Over, and I should really Let Myself Out).

Next week: Top Shop Autons

pillar
Originally uploaded by jamesandthebluecat.

So I was in Paddington Station about 7 this morning, waiting for the early train back to Cornwall, and I saw this pillar. This one, to the right. Which seemed oddly familiar for some reason...










Scroll down a bit more.....

dalek
Originally uploaded by jamesandthebluecat.

It's a bloody Dalek!

So if it turns out whoever designed the Daleks regularly got a train to the West Country, I have discovered a great secret and claim five english pounds.

And thus concluded my big London visit. As Adam has pointed out, I didn't make it as far as the 'clubbing' aspect of Big Gay Clubbing Friday Night (or indeed the 'gay' aspect), but I suspect they got on perfectly well without me.

In other news...

Adam's up in town tonight, so he emailed to ask if I want to go 'gay clubbing' tonight. Which sounds a bit harsh, frankly.

Mind you, I've never liked the gays. With their beady eyes, and pointy teeth, and their slightly-overlong torsos... no, wait, that's weasels.

'Woo', and indeed 'Hoo'.

Having been really quite skint for some time now, just heard from Special-Agent-In-Training Rachel that pay for a number of separate scripts has come through, which now fully justifies the rather rash decision I made to stay in London an extra night tonight.

I stayed in really quite a posh (well, by my standards) hotel last night, which unfortunately wasn't the 'posh hotel within walking distance from the office' I thought it was, but rather a 'posh hotel quite a long way away'. By the time I got there in the evening and dumped all my stuff, I didn't really feel like trekking all the way back into central London. So instead I ordered a high-class hooker and got her to teach me how to play Boggle. Which it turns out I'm rubbish at.

Received a prank call by someone about 2 in the morning, which is always nice. Some Eurotrash kids shouting 'Hey, you want the fuck?'. Which I turned down. And then 'Hey, you want drucks? I get you drucks!' Bless. I put the phone down, and could hear other phones ringing randomly throughout the hotel throughout the rest of the hotel.

I gave some pretty hard Paddington Bear stares to the other guests at breakfast this morning. Which told them.

The comedy prank call is my most hated form of comedy. And I don't mean silly hotel guests, I mean professional comedians ringing up hotel receptionists and getting them to say rude words by pretending there's a guest called 'Mr R. Sole' and so forth. It always suggests that the person behind this has never had to do a shit job in their life, and simply doesn't understand that the person on the other end of the line would dearly love to tell them to feck orf, but is afraid they might lose the one rubbish job they have.

Back to writey stuff:

The pay delay is pretty hard to deal with when you're starting out. People who needed your scripts like now, stat, on so on, aren't quite as forthcoming when it's time to hand out the cash. Not so bad when you've built up a bit of momentum, so the money from three jobs ago will pay the rent when you're doing some work that won't pay off for another month at the earliest, but difficult when you're starting out. I worked in Waterstone's (well, I say 'worked'...) and gradually went part-time, so I had a regular income to see me through while I was writing episodes of Bob the Builder and so on. Not everyone is in the position to do it this way (for one thing, they've stopped making Bob now), but it's a much more practical way of going from a day job to being self-employed. If anyone reading this is in the pleasant position of starting to make a living by writing - do the sensible thing and get an accountant as soon as you can: they will save you much much more money than they cost you. I'm still paying whacking great bills for not sorting out my finances properly in the first couple of years.

The most embarrassing thing when I was starting out was friends saying 'I hear you've had some scripts accepted! That's great!' And I'd say 'It is great! It's all great! Can I borrow a fiver please?'

More fillums.

I actually blanked 'Love Actually' out of my brain. And I wasn't overly happy to have that nasty door opened. Yeesh.

Off to see Agent Ginny in a sec. She sent out my prospective sitcom script to loads of people... and seems to have got absolutely no response, which is annoying. I recently wrote quite a few sketches on spec (i.e. for free) for four or five comedy shows, some onto their second or third series, some still in the embryonic stage. And I've heard nothing back on any of those either, which is even more annoying. So if you think that once you've had summat on telly those days of staring at the post box waiting to hear back from people called Jessica and Tara are over, think again.

Caught a preview of 'Team America' last night (thanks jen, and I will find that piccy of Kim Cattrall one day). Some good songs, but over-reliant on really really easy jokes about the gayers. One set of villains is called the Film Actors Guild (work out the acronym), and saying 'fag' once got a sort of half-hearted laugh, but silence on the next ten uses. And puppets giving each other blow jobs really wasn't that funny. It all sounds like the sort of stuff that sounds great in the writers' meeting, then falls flat on the screen. Like lots of my stuff, to be fair.

Just seen 'The Incredibles' though, which was great. Not sure I remember that much about it a few minutes after seeing it, but lots of great whizzy action sequences and characters you give a shit about. Starting to see some posters for 'Garden State' too, the trailer for which made me want to take some kind of film-making course. Then I realised it would be A) expensive and B) potentially difficult, so I changed my mind.

Right. Off to see Agent Ginny.