31 - Woken by Sally around 7:45am . . walked in the cold wind. Just up the road a guy was inspecting the new windscreen on his lorry. A week or so ago when walking past, I'd noticed a large chunk of stone laying on the pavement and the windscreen smashed, along with perhaps some other damage. :o( Looked like the work of 'kids'. Apparantly he'd just had the windscreen fixed, and lo and behold, under cover of darkness they'd thrown another rock at the new glass! It hadn't smashed but the brand new expensive big windscreen had chips taken out of it!!! BA****DS!! The look of desperation on that guys face was painful to behold. I couldn't find any words and ended up just shaking my head while holding out my arms with palms up in a despairing type of gesture as I walked away. That really got to and upset me. With all this prices rising, and recession stuff going on - there's a guy, probably struggling to eak out a living doing a stinking nasty 'transporting dead fish' type of job to try and keep up with his mortgage and put food on his family's table - and some stupid, dumb little ***t thinks it's funny to smash up his lorry!! It really got to me. . walked and eventually carried on out to the breakwater and open air pool, pointing the camera at this and that . . breifly stopped in the jewellers in town for a new watch battery (£3) . . PCd . . moved the car off the street and left it shut in round the back, hopefully safe from any possible trick or treat nonsense . . ate a tin of sausages in baked beans with grated cheese and four pieces of bread and butter . . .napped only to wake from a nightmare about confronting yobs!! . . felt yucky. Physically and mentally. Maybe it's because of the time of year and the relatively recent passing of the aniversary of my 'escape' from Bristol, but memories of all that yob nonsense have been frequently, uncontrolably, increasingly popping into my mind of late. It's funny how things alter over time - but you know what still haunts and hurts me the most about all of that? The court case. How it was treated as almost a nothing. How 'I' was treated by Boyce's defense scumbag. How little he was fined for how much of an impact it had on my life. (In fact - I've been drawn to make comparisons with fines for other offences I've read about in the paper, and it beggars belief to me that he was fined so little!) How I wasn't allowed to mention the whole chain of events and year of torture that lead up to the case. I can't even put it into words. It's something along the lines that, I feel that 'society' let me down - totally. It simply went through the motions of letting it be seen that justice was done - when in fact by that very process, it compounded the injustice and increased the hurt and damage to me. 'Society' has 'wronged me' , and I can't forget that. It's over there - and I'm over here! :o( . . . skipped the evening walk and TVd the night away eating chocolate . . touched base with BB . . TVd until bed around 2am.
30 - Up around 7:30am. Still windy and torrential rain!. . dressed in full weather gear and then drove to walk, carrying the tripod . . filmed a bit in BGdns before heading on out to the breakwater beach to wander up and down a bit before sitting for quite a while under one of the roofed shelters. Impressive waves blowing in - but not as spectacular as I have seen, and I couldn't really find anything much to point the camera at. Certainly nothing was out afloat while I was waiting there. . chatted a bit to some other dog walkers also sheltering there. "We've seen some of your 'work'." they announced!!!??? Somehow earlier in the year, JK had loaned them the DVDs to watch. They were all full of praise and asked if there was any chance of getting hold of a copy. Being the soft touch I am, I said I'd see what I could do and had their address off them before they carried on their way. .eventually called it quits and headed home, really rather frozen. . treated myself to having the heating on for a good part of the day, in an attempt to warm up . . PCd . . ate a chicken and mushroom pastry slice with crisps . . napped briefly . . thankfully the rain had stopped. Walked in the wind with a pocket full of discs and headed down to find the holiday home the people I'd met earlier were staying in. Hard to locate but eventually I 'think' I found it and just pushed the discs through the letterbox. . most of the way there anyway, I decided to brave the cold wind and carry on out to the breakwater to see what things looked like in the dark. Plenty of waves breaking over the breakwater. Had a go at filming here and there, but sadly it turned out it really was just too dark to make any use of most of the footage. Big waste of time and effort. :o( . . eventually headed back through town all cold and windswept . came upon the 'guided ghost walk' as I passed up a small alleyway. A group of a half a dozen or more people, some with halloween type masks on, were all lined up against a wall listening to the guide doing his silly 'oooh-it's-all-so-haunted- and-scary' talk. I passed by, behind the guide, before being unable to resist. I took a few paces backwards and behind the guide's back, breifly did that sort of mock scary stance of grimacing face and hands up like claws before matter of factly just carrying on my way. Made everyone giggle with laughter - although not the guide I think! . . PCd the mostly disappointingly 'too dark' footage. . touched base with BB . . cooked and ate a pack of Mum donated sausages in buttered bread rolls around midnight. . TVd until bed around 2am.s
29 - Up around sunrise/7am to mop all the condensation from the windows. My indoor outdoor thermometer says one degree above freezing outside, and only just above single figures inside! . .walked the woods, sat in BGdns for a breather and then back via town. Ended up stood around for an hour or more, filming the regeneration works - on both cameras simultaneously at one point! . . bought ten more burgers in the butcher and scored a couple of bones for Sally. . PCd . .SO cold - I tested the central heating. Still works. . ate corned beef etc sandwiches and crisps . . PCd . . singing man called in with tapes . . drove to pick up Mum in the heavy rain and wind, and dropped her down town for her to go see the amateur dramatics show (Annie Get Your gun) with Uncle/Auntie TJ etc. . REALLY nasty out. Stopped off at BGdns and walked Sally around in the gale. Incredibly there was a big party going on, on Churston beach in the distance - in the pouring rain!! A crowd of kids, big bonfire and even fireworks! It was 'almost' tempted to head off nearer and maybe grab a bit of film of it, but the weather was just too nasty and it probably wouldn't have been a 'safe' or appropriate thing to try and do. . TVd. Extraordinary amount of coverage on the news about the unpleasant prank phone call Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross had made to Fawlty Towers Manuel's ansaphone on their radio show. I think so called 'prank phonecalls' are nauseating. (Even my mother got wrapped up in one, and had me look it up on YouTube to play for her. Some young girl ringing up a Zoo wanting to buy an elephant or some such. Stupid and pathetic and simply an abuse and belittling of whoever is on the other end of the phone!) They've finally been suspended, and Russell Brand has resigned. All I can say is GOOD! Seems to me the whole thing is a bit like 'the emperors new clothes'. People have finally woken up to the fact that these outrageously overpaid people are short on any discernable 'talent' , are most certainly NOT in the least bit 'funny', and act like - well - frankly 'yobs' a lot of the time from what I've seen. No way can they appeal to anyone other than a 'younger' audience. The fact that a whole generation of youth these days seems to find amusement in abusing other people, with personal attacks and offensive jokes etc, does not make it right, and certainly not right for such huge amounts of licence fee payers money to be spent on it! It legitimises and promotes such behavior! As for Jonathan Ross and his multi million pound salary - they should spend the money on some decent programming instead. His interview program (Friday nights is it? I can't ever bear to watch it) is nauseatingly immature in presentation, and he is SO up himself, whatever guests he has on seem to be simply vehicles for him to stroke his own inflated ego. . it's greatly saddening to come to the realisation that the BBC really does seem to have lost the plot. Even the 24 hour news channel seems to have dumbed down and sold out. I had the misfortune of witnessing a 'live breaking news' type story, about how the latest Dr Who actor isn't going to be doing any more shows!!!! Oh my gawwwd!! Stop the presses!! They went on to interview and get the reactions of the head of the Dr Who fan club! I turned the TV off in utter disbeleif and disgust . .ate bowls of cornflakes . . touched base with BB . . drove to pick Mum up and drop her home. . TVd until bed around midnight.
28 - Up around 8am. .walked but oh so tired and really not feeling so good. Took the waistcoat Sis2 had given me, with me and gave it to a lady dog walker . . ended up sat in BGdns for absolutely ages just too tired to walk back. . . PCd a bit before ending up back in bed fitfully sleeping until afternoon. . . cooked and ate four cheeseburgers . . TVd . . napped . . skipped the walk. TVd . . BB called . . TVd all wrapped up against the cold in multiple layers, and ate a little chocolate until bed at 1am.
27 - Up around 7:30am. . .walked. Not sure why but I couldn't keep my big mouth shut (how patheticly sad!), and let it slip to the usual morning crowd of dog walkers that it was my birthday. They all sang Happy Birthday and the new lady one even gave me a hug/kiss on the cheek type thing!!!!!!!! Yikes!! . . vacuumed and de-dusted the living room gas fire ready for use later. . Mum called in with big food donations, birthday card and a gift of £250 ("So I'll be able to afford to turn my heating on")! :o) She also had a card and small gift which Sis2 had left when sorting her stuff out, the last time she was in the country. The gift, accompanied by instructions that 'if I didn't want it I should give it away and it was the thought that counts' turned out to be a leather waistcoat. I still do actually have a small waistcoat collection, but since I don't 'dress' for work anymore, I never have cause to wear them. I just don't dress like that for my current lifestyle. On closer examination, it turned out the waistcoat was actually a womans with the buttons on the wrong side, so I had no qualms about immediately deciding to give it away - probably to the 'new' lady dog walker who has joined the usual morning assembly. The one who has moved back to this country from the US, complete with her 'high fiving' dog. . . pottered around and really did nothing much. . ate Mum donated salami rolls with crisps and some chocolate . . napped until around 6pm . . .walked and eventually back via town . . TVd/guitarred/sat by the fire. All in all, successfully spent yet another Birthday in my time honoured way. Being thoughtful/reflective and alone. I actually wouldn't have it any other way! The only difference to me about having a birthday day, and any other day of the year, is that on my birthday, I feel somewhat less guilty about doing whatever it is I normally do. It's my birthday - I'm 'allowed' to have a smoke or a drink - I'm 'allowed' to have my fire on and be warm - I'm 'allowed' to do nothing and be on my own - I'm 'allowed' to eat a bunch of stuff and have some chocolate, etc, etc. Hard to explain. .BB called . . TVd . . ate a pastry slice, sausage rolls and a fudge cake thing and chocolate . . TVd/PCd the hours away before finally to bed not far short of 5am! as
26 - Up around 8am - or maybe that should be 7am because the clocks changed. .PCd reading the local news only to discover that there were reports of crowds of yobs frequenting part of town, and the other night they'd attacked a bus driver and a female PC who'd given out an urgent 'officer in need of assistance' call!!! Oh dear. :o( . .drove to walk in the rain . . PCd on the dolphin video. .the 'singing guy' called at the door and presented me with two cassette tapes of music he'd apparantly compiled from various Paramount 'demo' type CDs of amateur songwriters songs performed by whoever - including several written by himself!. . listened to the first of the music tapes. Well . . not sure what to make of all that. I'm programmed (by childhood/Dad) to be SO critical of everything, it's hard to be objective, and even more so when you've been primed to know they are all 'amateur' affairs. I think my overriding impression of HIS songs was, he really DOES 'have' something - although here and there they felt a bit wrong. Made me want to slightly re-write the odd line or two - and they definitely would have benefited from a more professional arrangement I think. Actually made me want to pick the guitar up and try and do them myself!! But - yeah - there is something remarkable about how that guys head works. How he can come up with such lyrics and tunes - and SO many apparantly SO effortlessly. I just wish he wouldn't keep singing them to me in the street! . . walked early . sat around for ages in BGdns before eventually carrying on down to return via town. Got chatting to a dog walker who turned out to be one of the abseiling worker guys. I couldn't help asking during the conversation. Apparantly they are paid around £185 per day. Dunno what to make of that. Given my income, of course that sounds like a small fortune to me, but I don't suppose it is, given what they do and in all weathers. As I'd imagined, they pretty much all appeared to be into extreme sports like abseiling or caving, etc, etc. And YES, at least some of them WERE sleeping in their vans on or near site. All in all, I think my attempt at explaining what they appeared to be like to BB was pretty accurate. They struck me as being like the characters in that film - 'Point Break' was it called? The one where Keanu Reeves plays an FBI agent trying to catch a gang of, Patrick Swayze lead surfer bank robbers, by infiltrating their scene. I could really imagine those abseil dudes coming down the rocks wearing ex president masks! lol It was pleasing to hear they liked the video I'd done, and that some of them had made themselves copies of the DVD I gave them. :o). . TVd. . . touched base with BB . . ate defrosted sausage rolls, crisps, pickled onions and a little chocolate. . TVd until bed around 1am. s
25 - Woken by Sally clattering into the bedroom around 8:30am . . walked. Wow - dolphin in the bay again. Same hassle as before, failing miserably to capture them on film! :o( . . PCd. Uncle TJ called (more than once!) to say (and let me hear) he was watching one of the discs I'd pushed through their letterbox the other day . .as is too often the habit, that saw me watching the same disc from wherever it was they were up to, to try and imagine what it may be like to be watching it for the first time simply as 'an audience' - and because I seem to be able to forget very quickly what videos I've actually done (until I watch them again and then find I can even remember where half the scene cuts are and where I had a hard battle to be able to include certain bits!!!!! Bizarre.). . walked via town and back around. A guy fishing had just caught a big fish so I offered to take a couple of photos and e-mail them to him. . PCd and mailed the photos. . cooked bacon, black pudding, a tin of sausages and beans and ate with grated cheese and four pieces of bread and butter. . . touched base with BB . . returned LBs ansaphone call. She was pretty drunk, and understandably upset about what the future holds for her! Her surgery has been brought forward to November 13th!!! Hard to be sure about the facts, given the state she was in, but it seems the surgeons are pretty concerened about the type of cancerous cells in evidence, and have hurried things up. :o( . . TVd with a little chocolate but was exhausted and ended up in bed by 11pm! s
24 - Up around 8:15am . .walked.
Uggh - whoever it is who forced those poor
seagulls to abandon their nest by putting up that windmill on top
of the holiday home roof (remember my video set to Sheyrl Crow -
'Home') , has gotten more serious about it. They've put up a
horrendous fabrication of slats of wood with huge nails poking up
through it, right where the nest used to be! Nasty. I'm pretty
sure I'd come up with a better/nicer answer to it if it was gonna
bug me that much! Surely just doing something more clever with a
larger amount of the chicken wire would be better for all
concerned?. . stopped in at Mums on the way back to pick up a
party hat she said she had laying around. I want to be able to
try and do a birthday card for LB, and wanted a birthday type hat
to dress Sally with. . PCd on the dolphin video trying to see if
there were enough actual 'glimpses' of them to be able to make
anything of it. Sadly just a few brief sillouettes . . 
quickly dressed Sally with the party hat and
eventually a bottle and glass of red wine and grabbed a few snaps.
Knocked up the birthday card image and then had enormous trouble
getting the printer to just print the damn thing out! Was I
having trouble because of the 'cheap' ink I've bought I wonder?
Took literally hours, loads of ink and paper wasted, and a change
of all the cartridges (I swear the ones the printer insisted I
replace were still quite full!) before I was able to FINALLY
print it. Arrrrgggghhh!!!! Did a 'full size' personalized one (A4
single fold on glossy photo paper) for LB and a smaller one (A4
four fold on paper) for IHB. . popped up the post office and
mailed the cards. Bought a large pack of half price bacon and a
small black pudding. . ate a banana and then napped for an hour
or so until woken by Sally . . drove to walk. Chilly but a very
clear, beautiful night. Sat around for half an hour or more,
trying to do a bit of night filming of the balloon and lights
across the bay. . fried up a huge plate of half the bacon, black
pudding, two eggs, onions and half a tin of baked beans and
feasted with four pieces of bread and butter . . . to bed around
12:30am. ada23 - Woken by Sally climbing on the bed just before 8am . . drove to walk. Wow - a big pod of dolphin were out in the bay all swimming and jumping about! Had a go at filming them but it was pretty impossible to know where they were going to appear next, and was doubly impossible on high zoom without the tripod. Shame. I regard getting something of the dolphin as one of the last things for me to actually capture evidence of on video . . PCd . .Mum called to say Sis1 was visiting. Popped up for coffee and brief chats. . . ate cheese, mayo, onion, lettuce and tomato sandwiches with crisps and then chocolate. . napped until the alarm at 6pm . .why oh why oh why am I ALWAYS feeling so, SO tired, no matter how much sleep I get?!! (On reflection - I guess having little to eat all day except a sandwich may be a clue!) With strong winds and rain in the air, I couldn't face the evening walk again. Hard to judge, but poor Sally doesn't actually seem to mind too much. . PCd a bit of this. Well - there's nothing worth watching on TV is there! . .TVd/PCd until early before bed. Woken after only an hour or two of sleep by the damn fridge making its hammer noise and requiring a beating. :o(
22 - Up just after 8am . . walked and carried on down town to drop off a few discs into Uncle TJs, bank my Fiesta £30 MVL refund cheque, and to have a quick look in a few charity shops. Scored a pair of trainers for £2.50. . had a funny desire to be eating mushrooms so spent a little in a greengrocer and bought four of those large flat ones. . Mum called to touch base . . fried the mushrooms and ate with four pieces of bread and butter. Actually turned out to be a big disappointment. They were pretty yucky! :o( . . PCd a bit . . JK called to touch base . . napped . . drove to walk . . TVd. <RANT> Despite how it may appear from here, as time goes by, I'm watching less and less TV because all of it seems to have turned to dumbed down trash. Tonight I watched the BBC 'Air Medics' program that was on from 8pm - but only just. This edition was called 'The Golden Hour'. The narration was utterly utterly appalling! The guy had a nauseatingly condescending tone, spoke as if the viewer was either six years old and/or brain damaged, continualy suggested a big drama 'could' happen at any moment (when in actual fact it was pretty obvious nothing of the sort was going to happen at all), and over and over and over again ad-nauseum kept on banging on about how many minutes was left of 'the golden hour' , as if everyone involved in any sort of an injury incident is obliged to promptly die sixty minutes later if they aren't airlifted to hospital. It was awful. Awful, awful, awful. SO frustrating having to listen to the patronising idiot, twitter on. When did it become necessary for us to have to have such nonsense forced upon us, when it would have been very easy to have had the whole show shown 'reality like', without a voice over at all! I swear these TV types must go to a college where they are brainwashed into thinking this stuff is required. How about that 'You've Been Framed' show? Some of those clips can be real funny and entertaining - but I've started having to watch the show, on the few occasions I still do, with the sound muted! Why has someone deemed it necessary for an alleged comedian to make particularly un-funny comments all over the top of all the clips, accompanied by canned laughter? I could go on and on - but there is one thing about current (reality type) TV shows that infuriates me more than ANYTHING. The way they will INSIST on cutting different story pieces into chunks and mixing them up and constantly going back and forth from one to another, re-capping the same events over and over again - for what is SO obviously no good reason other than to spin the 30 minute or less program out into a more profitable hour. (I've been SO tempted, and if it wasn't for the amount of pointless work involved, I WOULD have recorded one of these programs and re-edited it, just to prove how much of it had been 'actually' extended.) Is there some college where all these TV makers go, where the core syllabus is the Quentin Tarantino, Pulp Fiction method of nonchronological interwoven short story program extending for maximum profit? So much TV has been dumbed down and manipulated in this way now, I can hardly bear to watch it. Oh - and one other thing while I'm on the rant. On occasions there are TV shows (on the BBC especially) where critical viewers are allowed to confront the program makers and point out blatant errors and 'wrongdoing'. I have yet to see a single one of such programs where the program maker will 'actually' accept they made an error - or if they appear to, they will do so in the manner of a slippery politician, where underlying their apparant reluctant acceptance, is a clear and insulting manner of arrogant denial! </RANT> . . touched base with BB . . ate a small mum donated chicken pie and a couple of bananas. . TV/PCd until around 2:30am before bed. Had a serious search through my files and pretty much confirmed that somewhere in all the mayhem of video making these last few months, I HAVE lost/deleted some neat irreplaceable footage I took, of the pile-driving work on the new harbourside. Really annoyed about that. s
21 - Woken by banging doors! . . walked . . did laundry while finally, FINALLY getting serious with my accounts and outstanding paperwork. Somehow I've pegged my direct debit to the water company too high - although probably because I've not been showering as much as I should these last few busy months. I've actually ended up £80 in credit!?? Phoned up and reduced it. . blimey - that's the biggest electric bill I think I've EVER had in my life!!! :o( Ok - so £100 for a quarter is probably pretty low by most peoples standards, but it's pretty bloody high for me - especially considering I've replaced almost every lightbulb in the place with energy savers! I need to start monitoring my unit consumption as I used to. On reflection, aside from the obvious increase in prices, I can imagine a combination of factors that have led to that. Firstly, I've slipped back into the habit of leaving the TV/Sky-box/DVD on standby all the time. (Actually stopped while typing this to go and change how things are plugged in, so it'll be easier to kill everything on the single multiblock extension chord switch). The other reason for a high bill is without doubt, all this video making nonsense. PC and periferals constantly running (sometimes TWO machines!) - always charging camcorder batteries - chain drinking coffee (kettle) - working through until early every night with lights on, etc, etc, etc. Hmmm - I wonder if using the arc-welder/grinder when I did the garden gate maybe had a significant impact? Decided to get into the habit of actually turning off the microwave all the time as well. I've never managed to figure out how to set the clock on that old 'inherited with the house' machine, so why have it on all the time? So - what that means is, when I'm not actively using something, all that is on in the house is the fridge freezer, the chordless phone, ansaphone (sadly a seperate old one) and the central heating timer (which actually given the way I live, could also probably be turned off). Hard to see how it is possible for me to economise any more! I still haven't had any form of heating on yet this autumn, although have come pretty close this last couple of evenings. One of the things that helps me resist is, I need to vacuum and de-dust the living room gas fire before I fire it up again, and I keep putting off the chore. So - back to wearing my usual winter three layers already, and often sit watching the TV with my hoodie up! . . Yayyyy - got everything sorted and even managed to locate and rectify the misbalance I ended up with the last time I tackled it all, and got back to balancing to the penny. :o) Excellent. SO glad to have that sorted again for a while. WHAT a weight off my mind. . changed some of my accounts and savings around using the PC - because the damn bank have sneakily reduced the interest on my savings account down to next to nothing. After all these years of resisting it, I've finally started to do 'internet banking'! Assuming I can maintain security, it IS pretty neat to be able to do all that, in that way, instantly. . walked. . .TVd . . . drank a glass of red wine while cooking a ham ring, eggs and chips to eat again . . touched base with BB . . ate chocolate and TVd until bed before 1am. ds
20 - Woken by Sally barking at the postman delivering junk mail around 9:15am . . drove to walk late. . wasted hours burning and printing DVd copies for specific 'give aways' . . left Sally at home and walked in the rain to post one bunch through a letterbox and to hand another to the guy up the fish place round the corner, who I'd promised earlier in the year would get a copy of volume 3! Found 2p . . drank a glass of red wine while cooking a ham ring, eggs and chips to eat . . attempted to nap but as soon as I'd fallen asleep the phone rang. No answer was left and I suspect yet again it was one of those damned sales callers. Soon after that Sally started barking a little as neighbours returned to their homes and eventually I just gave up and got back up . . filthy weather! Drove to walk again - although with hindsight, even though I'd only had just one glass of wine earlier, such is the effect it has on me, maybe I shouldn't have driven!!! . . .PCd, intending to do my accounts and paperwork but somehow I just ended up sitting watching a bunch of my own videos again!!! ANY excuse not to have to do that paperwork it seems! . . touched base with BB to hear the bad news. A missing cousin had finally been found - she'd been murdered, dumped in a field and burned!!. . ate bowls of corn flakes and TVd until bed around 1am. da
19 - Woken by Sally just before 8am . . drove to walk . . PCd the boats across Torbay video. The software seems to have settled down somewhat. . ate ham rolls and crisps. . . napped until around 6pm. . skipped the evening walk. . TVd. . touched base with BB. . ate a steak and kidney pie, crisps, pickled onions and chocolate. . TVd, occasionaly popping up to feed another blank disc in to the PC for burning. . somehow ended up back on the PC, dabbling with flying boats video until bed around 3am. sa
18 - Up just before 7am again. . .drove to walk . . PCd the Woolworths footage until Mum arrived for tea, chats and to donate food. . . ate ham rolls . . napped until woken by Sally. . skipped the evening walk and straight back on the PC to work at the video some more. Uh oh. The video software appears to have become totally unreliable/unstable all of a sudden!!?? A handful of commands and it'd crash or freeze or just suddenly disappear in the middle of something!!!!!?? Agonising trying to coax it to finish off the video . . touched base with BB . . PCd more only to find that the upload I'd done to YouTube, in the same way and at the same quality as all the others, for some reason was not appearing the same. .time consuming multiple re-rendering and uploading/deleting before eventually having to upload a huge high quality version. Took ages to upload - but it must be said, the result on YouTube in terms of quality, IS pretty good. Quite possible to watch it full screen and have it appear not 'that' much lower quality than my original!! . . ate a couple of bananas . . finally went to bed long after 4am!!! :o(
17 - Up before 7am with a bit of a headache. . PCd a bit of this . .I must - I absolutely MUST get on and do some of my paperwork and accounts today! I'm in such a mess, and it's making me all anxious all the time, having all this stuff hanging over me like it is. I want to get some more blank DVDs too! . . walked. . .left Sally at home and drove to the out of town Staples and bought 2 x spindles of 16x100 DVD-Rs (£39.98) and a pack of paper (£5.79) . . oh dear. So much for doing my accounts and paperwork!! - printed covers and burned copies of discs. . walked to deliver a few. Dropped a couple through the letterbox of the local fire station to start with. Seems like a long long time ago now, but when I filmed the station training night with the green bio hazard suits etc, I'd promised to let them have a copy of the footage. . headed back through town only to find there was still a bit of queuing outside Woolworths (I'd sadly missed the biggest queues a few days ago - even photos in the local papers) and figured that given the shop would soon be gone, it was an opportunity I just couldn't miss. Ended up sat on a seat, with the camcorder precariously perched on my gloves on the wall above me, for an hour or so trying to get enough for a bit of timelapse. Sadly the queue really wasn't what it could have been, and actually disappeared as soon as I'd set the camera up, but eventually I managed to get enough to be able to make something of it for posterity. . filming was eventually curtailed when a small schoolboy suddenly came over with a small crowd of his friends, sat on the seat and announced he was one of the kids in the tombstoning video I'd done. Wow - I'm a terrible judge of peoples ages! He looked older in the video. The person sat next to me on that seat was just a little schoolkid!! Seemed appropriate to split out one of the videos from the set I had in my pocket, and gave him a copy of Pebbles Vol. 4 (with the TV quality Tombstoning footage) with instructions for him to take it home and give it to his parents, so they'd have a copy for posterity. . carried on to the nearby store and gave a copy of the five hour Hap'nin' video to the 'Rage' guitarist . carried on out to the lifeboat station and actually spotted the Cox just returning from showing someone around the boat, so I briefly interupted and with the shortest of explanations, handed over four copies of the lifeboat week DVD. . . PCd the Woolworths footage and then somehow ended up surfing, looking up relevant stuff on the Woolworths PLC website etc. Downloaded a couple of videos from Youtube that have just THE perfect music to use with it, and messed around with it for a few hours! I can't resist - I have a horrible feeling I'm going to break my usual rule about not wanting to offend anyone, and am liable to get pseudo 'political' with this Woolworths video. I mean - all those people queuing because they are relatively hard up and can't ignore a 70% off sale - and that Woolies CEO is on £550k per annum PLUS monster bonuses etc!! Bet he never queues for a sale! . .ate a large pile of salad and liver sausage sandwiches with crisps, chocolate and the last of the kipling tarts. . touched base with BB . . JK called . . to bed not long after 11pm. s
16 - Up at 8:45am. Blimey - that's like a proper nights sleep for a change. .PCd a bit of this. .drove to walk . .
PCd and knocked up the cover for the Hap'nin'
DVD. .PCd the whole day away again, this time burning copies of
everything and printing out covers etc. That last lot of blank
DVDs I bought appears to be less reliable than previously. Quite
a few went straight in the bin and for all I know, some of those
I think burned ok are probably corrupt and non players. On the
plus side, that cheap printer ink I bought appears to be doing
the business quite nicely. That WAS a good deal. . . ate the last
of the stew with bread and butter for lunch. . kept burning etc
until I'd once again completely run out of blank DVDs. That's a
pack of fifty got through just today!!!! . walked and dropped off
one full set of discs and posted another through a letterbox.
With somewhere in the region of fifteen individual titled 'productions'
(and several of those twin disc sets!!), there is just too much
of it to keep doing that, but I have a mental list of certain
people who have already had all the early ones, who expressed
genuine interest and who will probably end up with the full set -
with instructions that any they don't want to keep (which is
probably lots of it) they should give back to me. . sat in BGdns
for ages drinking a can of stella left behind by PS. Amazing
moonrise over the bay. Would have made a good timelapse but I'm
SO burned out with it all! . Both all weather and inshore
lifeboats were out and about apparantly doing something. . TVd. .
cooked and ate four burgers in bread rolls. . touched base with
BB. . TVd until earlyish to bed. d15 - Up around 7:15am, woken by the sound of some lorry or other 'reversing'!. . drove to walk. . back on the PC to wrestle some more with the Hap'nin' DVD . . just a nightmare of crashing and recompiling and arrrrggghhh!!!! . . actually did dish washing etc chores in some of the 'down time' while the PC processed (and crashed over and over!). . ate stew and bread and butter for lunch . . SO much to include, no way could I include a menu screen, so just set chapter points at all the songs. That took an absolute age. Manually finding and setting what turned out to be a total of 82 chapter points!!!. . . . . . walked leaving the PC re-rendering the DVD. Sure enough, when I returned home, the program had crashed again!. .TVd while I had yet another go. Oh my god! It worked!! Compressed the result and burned a test DVD disc. skipped through the DVD sampling bits and making sure it looked ok. It's just far too long to 'proof watch' as I normally do. It's SO compressed it is kinda blurry around the edges, but I think it's watchable enough. Incredible - a total running time of 5hrs 26minutes - on just the one disc!! . . touched base with BB. . TVd. . ate a little cheese, crisps, lettuce onion and a kipling tart. . TVd until bed before 1am.
14 - Woke earlier then up around 8am . . . . crash/crash/reboot/ etc etc etc . . . napped until only around 5pm when woken by the sound of next doors smoke alarm being activated/reset/activated again, etc, etc. . .drove to walk . . PC crashed again so in disgust and short temper I simply quite literally pulled the plug out on it and walked away. . .cooked stew
13 - Woken around 7:30am by Sally barking at someone going into next door I think. . PCd . . walked . . PCd just a bit . . cooked and ate two small burgers with chips. . slept all afternoon again until around 4:30pm!! . .drove to walk. . PCd on some unfinished business, actually working on trying to put together all the 'Hap'nin'' performances so I can poduce a DVD to share. That is gonna be a real long fiddly job in itself! :o( I'm very tempted to have a go at pushing the software I have to its limits, to see if I can eventually cram the whole two days performances I captured, onto one single, low quality, extra long play disc!. . TVd . . ate a tin of sausages in beans with chopped onion, grated cheese and some bread crusts . touched base with BB . . TVd until bed at 1am.
12 - Woken around 7:15am, actually by the sound of PS snoring in the room next door!!. . real pea soup of fog outside. .PCd until PS eventually appeared . . all walked rather late, and ended up sitting outside a cafe on the harbourside eating a tea cake, scone and coffee. . soon returned home and PS set off back home around 11:30am. . feeling utterly exhausted, I pretty much went straight back to bed!! . . woke after 4pm, feeling much better for the sleep for a change . . ate a banana and a pastie PS had left behind. .PCd working on the 'baby bounce' video footage . . drove to walk. . straight back on the PC. . touched base briefly with BB . . Jk called . TVd and watched the second in the series on the history of the guitar before then getting straight back to the PC . .. ate salami and lettuce sandwiches around 2am or later. . finished off the Baby Bounce uploads etc, before finally to bed approaching 4am. I can't imagine many people are gonna be interested in that footage - although I must confess, the more I had to sit and look at it as I worked on it, the more I appreciated the little things and the 'ahh factor'. s
11 - Broken nights sleep then up around 8:15am. Headachey and tired. PCd just a bit of this but all half done/forgotten and unfinished, as usual of late. I just can't keep up! . .eventually banged on PS door to wake him up . . all walked real late, after 9:30am! Glorious warm sunny weather. . carried on down around the harbour and on out to the Breakwater Bistro for a cooked full english breakfast. The waitress suggested a 'double' for an extra £2 so I went along with the suggestion. Turned out to be a mistake. HUGE amount of food and some trouble getting through it all. Felt obliged to contribute £5 to PS towards the cost of it all (the rest all paid for by him again). . slowly wandered out along by the open air pool and then back just watching the world go by. Plenty of scuba divers all going in off the beach . .all walked the breakwater and back . . . sat around for absolutely ages in an uncomfortably hot sun trap at the end of the breakwater as I insisted on hanging around trying to film a sail boat being lifted out of the water for the winter. Would you believe it. The one boat I choose from several possibles, is the very one that seems to drag on for over an hour before I could get the entire sequence!! VERY hot and dry waiting around for so long. Poor PS was obviously bored to tears. . . eventually back via sits in BGdns. It would appear drinking yobs had been tearing off the roof tiles above the seats and smashing them all over the place again in the night. :o( . .very dehydrated. . briefly popped up the store and returned the DVD and bought milk. . napped for maybe only an hour while PS watched the England v. who cares match on the TV. . woke still with a headache and feeling pretty bloody awful. Crunched another annadin tablet . . TVd . . touched base with BB. . ate salami and lettuce sandwiches and chocolate . . . TVd until bed around 2:30am. s
10 -
Up around 7am.
. PCd a bit of this. . did dishwashing chores. . walked. Sat
around in BGdns for ages before eventually heading down to the
harbour to have a go at filming whatever a 'baby bounce' is!!!!.
. eventually a bunch of people turned up with their babies and I
filmed whatever was happening as best I could. Felt particularly
awkward at first. The organiser fully appreciated my unease and
actually came over early on with an offical 'Torbay' council type
badge for me to wear!! Good idea I guess, but it didn't seem
appropriate for me to be wandering around wearing such a thing,
so I declined. (Bit risky on her part actually. Lets face it -
she doesn't know me from Adam. I could have been a serial child
killer!)
PCd making up a cover for the DVd . printed
and burned . . mum called in . . ate sausage roll etc. . napped .
. dreadful weather . . skipped the walk . . PCd surfing things to
buy! . .Received an e-mail about an upcoming 'event' I 'may wish
to video' for posterity. A pirate themed 'Baby bounce and rhyme
session'!!!!?. . . touched base with bb . . ,