TV
I’d Do Anything No More, 2 Slim 2 Move & Almost 40
Jun 1st
I’d Do Anything No More
So she won. I seem to be in a minority amongst those around me in loving BBC talent shows. 12 million people watch them but you can’t seem to find one can you? Funny that. Anyway, Jodie won and I voted. 5 times. She was undeniably chuffed and deservedly so. Andrew Lloyd Webber seemed genuinely pleased but Cameron McIntosh appeared to be completely graceless about the final decision.
Don’t leave it up to the public if you don’t want the public to choose.
I do wonder, it has to be said, how many of the sofa-parked butts in TV land belong to people who actually go to the theatre. There seems to be this great idea that it’s “our” West End and “our” theatrical tradition”. In truth, the West End is several hundred miles from me and I estimate a return trip including hotel stay to be in the £300-£400 price range. Not likely then. Plymouth does have it’s own Theatre Royal and many a production has made it’s camp way down here. It’s just that I have never been. I am sure I’d love it if I did but I guess I would rather watch TV. Oooooh the irony…
2 Slim 2 Move
The diet continues slowly. Another pound fell off this week but all is not well in my group. You see, my two best buds who come with me and sit amongst the nice ladies of Plympton have decided not to go anymore. I don’t think sis is going again either which leaves me alone with the plump ladies of the W.I. They really are a great bunch, the consultant in particular but what good is an experience like Slimming World if you don’t have any friends at work to yak about it with? Not much as far as I am concerned, which is why I am going to another group with two more best buds. Let’s see how long this lasts then…
Soon 40
Not long now then. Just over a week.
I want presents and I want them soon.
Popularity: 9% [?]
Gap
Mar 30th
Stone
I have been a bit quiet on the diet news of late. To be honest, it was starting to get me down. I was getting bored of the food and then getting annoyed with myself for cheating and/or not pounding away on the treadmill as much as I should. I think it went something like this as the weeks went on – lost ½ pound, lost ½ pound, stayed the same, put on 1½ pounds and then all of sudden, two weeks ago I stepped on the scales 5 pounds lighter. Somewhere in amongst those weeks is a net loss and I was completely floored by it. Now, in a perfect world that made sense, I would simply photocopy my food/exercise diary for that week and repeat ad nauseum. Within scant few months, I would hit the 12 stone mark and life would be healthy and fabulous. Alas no, because this week I stayed the same. I ate much the same things and did less treadmilling. I think there’s a lesson in there for me.
Still, I mustn’t grumble. That 5lb loss takes me down to 15st 10lbs which is my lightest for a loooong time. The old round face is now distinctly oval and the trousers won’t stay up. I should point out that this is because my belts no longer have enough notches rather than it being a desperate cry for help.
Apart from the increasingly obvious, Slimming World has had an another affect on my life. Thursday (weigh-in day) is now that last day of my week and It’s also the day I go to the bank (all this weight loss costs money). Friday has turned into a sort of non-day and Monday has become “jesus-christ-it’s-almost-weigh-in-day-again”.
Jericho
For the second entry running, I bring news of a US TV nature. Jericho was brill but it is no more. For those of you who remember “The Survivors”, a BBC TV series from the 70′s, it was similar to that. But not really. Post-apocalyptic science fiction is (obviously) not everyone’s cup of tea and it’s a shame that so many people will just see it as that. It managed one full season of 22 episodes and then was cancelled. Fans sent over 40 tonnes of nuts to CBS (“nuts” was a line used by one of the characters at a pivotal moment in the final episode) and the series was given a 7 episode reprieve. Unfortunately, fans’ eagerness for new material was probably the series’ undoing. The first 3 new episodes were “leaked” onto the internet and devoured weeks before the proposed TV premiere. Now, I am particularly suspicious of such “leaking”. The episodes that find their way onto the net in this fashion are usually broadcast quality and you have to wonder whether something else is going on. Subsequent episodes appeared online and the same eager fans (particularly those who live overseas) downloaded them.
The result? Almost everyone who really loved the series saw the new episodes in a manner that barely registered in the ratings and another example of well-written, well-made US TV bit the dust for a second and final time.
As a footnote, if you see the Season One boxset languishing in a bargain basket at Tesco’s for £10-£15 anytime soon, do yourself a favour and see what all my fuss is about. I guarantee you will watch every episode in about 3 days. It was that good. Every single one of the people I recommended it too last year agreed and so did every single person they recommended it to as well.
Just think of the shit that appears on british TV between 7pm and 10pm every night. Jericho was transmitted on the Hallmark channel on SKY and probably got a few hundred thousand viewers if it was lucky. Perhaps I am being too harsh though. After all, if we put trashy US imports like this on BBC1 or ITV, where would we put all those fine hospital/police/forensic/grumpy detective dramas featuring those fine actors making the difficult transition from soaps?
Easter
Everyone have a good Easter? Cool. I had one Thornton’s Diabetic Egg that I stretched over 3 days. Nice but very much the next best thing. Of course, the wise people tell Diabetes sufferers to stay clear of Diabetic chocolate as it’s overpriced and has laxative side-effects. Have a nice apple instead.
Well they can just f**k off and eat their football sized creme eggs in smug silence for all I care. Then they can shove a nice apple up their own bottoms.
By the way, do all you smokers realise that it is bad for you? You do? I don’t understand. Why do you do it then? Are you stupid? irresponsible? inconsiderate? What do you mean you just f**king want one?
Popularity: 2% [?]
Almost Birthday Blog
Jun 9th
The Build-up
Here I am. Another weekend ahead and a week off after that, as is the usual custom when birthday comes around. This custom stems from constant fear of a strippogram in a previous job, 20 years ago. When you are just out of school and sharing an office with two late-30 something ladies, the cheeky threat of a strippogram was always raised around June. The threat was not an empty one either. In the late 80s, you couldn’t break wind without justifying a visit from an overweight slapper dressed as a policewoman.
One example does spring to mind. It was the long hot summer of 1988 and I think the poor guy in question was 18 I think. He was our new purchase ledger clerk and had been working with us for about a year. He invited us all to his birthday bash at a local railway workers social club. As usual, for reasons nothing at all to do with the lad in question, nobody really wanted to go. Well, you just don’t do you? Anyway, 10 or so of us turned up in that “going on to somewhere else after” way that you do. The social club was packed to the rafters with his extended family, from 3 year old nephews to his 80 year old grandparents. Not present, we were soon to discover were his football teammates Unknown to anyone, they instead sent what can only be described as a fat old cow dressed as a St Trinian’ schoolgirl. I apologise to the lovely, larger ladies reading this, for I do know a few. I mean no disrespect to your generously proportioned loveliness, but it did rather look like someone had tied the cuffs and collar of a white blouse and poured the contents of a butcher’s dustbin in.
Anyway. The grisley tableux unfolded and poor Scott experienced the slowest, most painful few minutes of his young life. The lady’s pimp/photographer placed a chair in the middle of the dancefloor and Scott was forced to sit on it. The manky old bag of spanners planted her corpulent backside on his lap and pressed his blushing and unfortunately sober face into her bottomless cleavage. She quickly decided that doing this in front of his embarrassed family was not enough and freed her bosom for all to see. And so it went on…
Poor Scott was completely sober and I can only imagine what his was going through his head. The ritual slaughter of a football squad was probably pretty high on the list, closely followed by the thought that he could never face any of his family ever again.
But its just a laugh isnt it?
I will be back in a while. I need a lie down.
Unity
So it looks like The Strike is going on ahead. Well, the workers have voted for strike action by a majority of 77%. Or have they? Well if you read the papers or listen to the radio and tv, it would be easy to think that that is the whole story. Not quite. You see, only members of the my union have voted. Not everyone is a member of the union. In fact, as far as I can make out, there are 20,000 members of the workforce (myself included) who are not union members and hence their opinion is not asked for or counted. Ok, so I am sure many of you have strong opinions on the subject of unions and here is not the place for a debate, its just that I haven’t heard that fact mentioned in the last few weeks. I am not saying that we should get a vote in union ballots or anything, it just seemed like a tiny fact was being ignored by everyone.
Ok, so the tiny fact doesn’t affect the outcome, but we all need to know everything before damning an entire workforce to hell with your fiery public opinion.
I am not saying for one minute that all of the 20,000 would vote “no” to a strike either, its just that all of my friends seem to think the same thing. A strike is a really bad idea when we have lost a 1/3 of our business to competitors. Even the idea of a strike has lost us customers in a the last few weeks. We were offered 2.5% or a £600, non-pensionable lump sum. Also, there was a colleague share scheme announced last week that would see us get a payment of about £800 a year and (I think) a lump sum of £5,300 after 5 years. Not brilliant in my mind, but nothing to grumble about.
Maybe you have to have been made redundant at least once to take a sensible look at your future and be mature enough to strike a balance between your immediate financial status and your long-term job security. Unfortunately, I know that a large portion of my workforce are quite young, non-pension members who have no intention of staying in their current job more than 12 months. So, because I don’t choose to be a union member, they have voted on my future for me and I get no say at all.
Incidentally, is there anything lower on the social or evolutionary scale to a union than a non-member? Selfish, piggy-backing, spineless, lazy freeloaders the lot of us…
Jericho
Yeah!! Fine TV series Jericho has been saved from cancellation by commited, loony geeks from all over the world. I am not sure what that teaches us but…
Hold that thought…
Popularity: 1% [?]
