oops...

Got in this morning, to discover one of my fellow managers chicken-strangling mad about someone blocking her into our nightmare of a staff car park (which is about 40 feet long, but only 9 feet or so wide, and has rough brick walls down both sides for removing paintwork).

She was being so archetypally angry that I said "You want to watch out, or they'll cast you in an American sitcom". This was merely ill-advised.

Since I'd just been reading about it, I then said "If they ever remake thirtysomething, you'll be a shoo-in".

The young lady in question has just turned 30.

Whoops.

You know when they talk about someone "having a conniption"? Well, now I know what it looks like...

(no subject)

"...beneath "Friends" glossy comic surface was a drama of fear and hatred"
"So long as I could hear Friends as a musical comedy without the music, everything was fine, but I could only do that for the length of time it took to tell a joke. After that, I could hear it falll deep and dark into life, into a hateful relationship with the real world"

Oh for Chrissakes, Jeffries, give it a rest. There are few things more ridiculous than the attempt to imbue deep significance into absolutely everything - from there, it's only a short slide into the chin-stroking Late Review mentality, where every puddle of water and pint of milk are very, very important.

Accepting some things as purely frivolous, and there to be enjoyed as such, is a basic component of leading a healthy, happy life.
I can just about cope with Jeffries' sardonic analysis of "thirtysomething" (principally because even from my young days when it was originally shown, I remember the programme took itself and its moral message very seriously), but once you start trying to extrapolate deep socio-economic subtext out of "Friends", you might just as well go and whole hog and but the black polo-neck and Instant Goatee...

My countrymen and other animals

Since I speak so frequently on the delights of King's Lynn, I'm sure you must occasionally think "Surely there are worse places?"

Well, yes there are. And one of them is Downham Market, a town about ten south of Lynn which I pass through on my way to and from work.

The following links to a heartwarming story about Downham Market's most high-profile resident:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/norfolk/4630389.stm

Makes me so proud to be living in East Anglia, that does...

(no subject)

Spent much of the evening watching the 1971 film of "Under Milk Wood". It's not a particularly successful adaptation, mainly because Under Milk Wood is poosibly the most gloriously vivid piece of writing in the whole of British literature, and putting pictures onto it is a fairly pointless exercise, other than giving Richard Burton the chance to look very moody, and ravish a young lady of dubious morals.

Talking of which, how uncannily prescient of the director to cast Elizabeth Taylor as a whore, one of whose sailor customers is heard to mutter "ruddy good value" as he leaves the love-shack.

The weirdest bit of casting, however, is the sultry Gypsy temptress Mrs Dai Bread Two, who is played by ... Ruth Madoc. Tits out and all...
Gladys Pugh would have had a nasty turn at the very thought...