Blogging about blogging, the last refuge of a navel-gazer

This weblog as I will insist on calling it (conjoining the words web and log was a big enough step for someone like me) serves a very useful purpose for me- like my pedometer it's an external regulator of me- it makes me explore what I'm doing and thinking, and often actually firms up what that is.

Like most people, I suspect, I don't know what I think about a subject until after I've heard myself talk about it, and generally find when I do listen to myself I don't know a damned thing about anything. So these entries form a sort of exercise regime for my mushy thinking and communicating, firming up my ideas and opinions in public just as I attempt to firm up my flab when exercising physically.

Just as with physical exercise I set myself arbitrary targets to hit- I must run for more than half an hour/I must produce nine entries a month, and I do it in public so once I've started I feel obliged to carry on, even when it's painful.
Letting myself down or showing myself up in public would be horrendous.
Basically, I'm in the process of creating observers to measure myself by, and if occasionally that means making an idiot of myself in clear view that's what I have to do.

Hopefully, in the process I'm exercising my mental muscles a bit and behaving more like the me I'd like to be (another imaginary observer) would.

Interesting meeting today- I found myself publicly unenthused about my sitcom idea King Coney, which was a relief, because although it uses one of my writing styles quite nicely it's not a style I'd particularly want to listen to in half hour chunks, let alone write half hour chunks of. My lack of passion allowed my producer to express similar uncertainty and I've quite happily written the thing off.
Funnily enough though, letting the thing I was uncomfortable writing go, unlocked the germ of something I fancied writing much more on the way back home.

There we go- mandatory ninth entry of the month completed. I feel better for it, at least.

Sleepwalk

There’s been illness in the house this week, which is always a bit weird. There’s someone else here needing beans on toast, sleep and sympathy at unpredictable intervals. The world’s shrunk and the difference between week and weekend, already a bit bleary when you work from home, has almost completely vanished.
In my head this is what getting old seems like, a sneakily shrinking world.

Tomorrow I’ll be braving distances greater than a five minute walk to the shops for the first time in ages, I’ll be the one wandering around making Rip Van Winkle style incredulous faces at how the world has changed while I’ve been away and pointing at normal stuff in wonder.
Say, isn’t that Wilma Dearing over there? No, it is not.
The world has not changed that much.

I’ll be off to that Manchester again to talk about radio ideas- comedy ones, maybe a feature one which I’d love to do, a couple of comedic drama ones, no SF ones, that producer’s away at the mo. Wish me luck like the insincere, innumerate liars who don’t think through the consequences of their wishes on the lottery would.

So-so Po-mo Promo

Thrill to the tiny words and picture, thrill, I command thee, thrill!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbc7/comedy/

Incomprehensible, yes?
Clearly, this will generate good word of mouth as the whisper goes around that's there's a head-scratchingly unfunny new show in town, like some monstrous David Shrigley cartoon made audible.

This is what Sally sent- "In No Tomatoes, BBC7 talks to the regions and to dogs, zero will vanish forcing all the negative and positive numbers in creation to bang into each other and cancel out, you will be invited to imagine the most bizarre and dull slide show possible, pompous academics will be found ranting in the dairy section of the supermarket, children’s TV characters will go on strike, words will change their meaning and form. There will be jokes."
Obviously too long given what was used, if we'd known they wanted that little, I would have just suggested sending the "There will be jokes" bit as I think that's quite important.
There will be jokes.

Still, nice to be up there, in terrifyingly public view, another slouchy step forward towards existing.

Sliced Tomatoes

Just seen the billing matter that's been prepared for No Tomatoes behind my back! I imagine this will scroll tediously across digi-displays and sit somewhere or other on the BBC7 website.
It's been put together by unsung Production Assistant Sally Harrison in an actually rather creepily good pastiche of my style, and only partly because she's nicked bits out of my initial pitch document in the process. I'm quite giddy now, because it appears I'm going to get some prepublicity on the BBC7 website (I'm guessing in that tiny window that says Coming Soon). We think they'll be featuring my logo on the site too (I think largely because the one photo taken in production is ghastly beyond flabber).

Sally couldn't believe I created that logo by bunging a real tomato in my scanner and photoshopping the hell of it. It does seem ridiculous thinking back, but hey it was the easiest way I had of finding a copyright free tomato graphic.

Tantalising teaser text follows-

Episode 1 / Dog Days: Talking to the regions and to dogs, No Tomatoes immerses you in occasionally surprising words.

Episode 2 / Trash Talk: A nostalgic trip through the rubbish dump of your mind - featuring spellings in shaped spaghetti.

Episode 3 / Train Times: Smell your 3rd portion of No Tomatoes, with couscous from Paul Copley, Helen Moon and Ian Potter.

Episode 4 / World Weary: Imagine a perfect picture in sound then hear it shatter before your very ears.

Episode 5 / Doctor Doom: The best cure you’ll find for a moody fridge - No Tomatoes have been peeled and censored by the man.

Episode 6 / Retro Rocket: Dub your life into English and re-connect with that harp effect from olden times.

Your interest is piqued now, isn't it? Admit it. Go on, or I may cry.

For more tedious No Tomatoes promotional nonsense why not check here out?
It's got the signature tune and the rotten photo on and allsorts.

This Personal Quantaleptic Phase Distortion Device That I Have In My Right Hand in Loaded

Well, I’ve been bashing around some ideas for Afternoon Plays and failing to grab my radio drama producer’s imagination for a bit, when suddenly comes the suggestion- do you have any science fiction thoughts?
You know what? At the moment I have absolutely none.
None that will lend themselves to an Afternoon Play audience, anyhow. I think good radio is so often about people and good SF is so often about ideas that finding a story that includes real emotion and a new SF idea seems almost insurmountable.

So often SF radio seems to be built on quite old and rubbish twists like “A ha, but the humans are actually monsters, we tricked you, you see because you couldn’t see what they looked like.” An ancient swizz of a reveal, so Antediluvian that it might as well be-
“It is our duty to populate this new world then, Commander.”
“If we’re going to do that you better stop calling me Commander! It’s Adam, Miss Goodbody.”
“Eve, call me Eve.”
Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!
Either that or it's some kind of space operatic runaroundery featuring Paul Temple style urgent acting and tinfoil and tinsel jargon sprinkled on the dialogue. Impressively, James Follett managed to do both in Earthsearch.

Must come up with something clever, with a plot and real people you can pitch in one or two sentences that hasn’t been done. Eeek.

Maybe I could adapt my Doctor Who short stories? Doomed romance with couple ending up in parallel worlds? Doctor Who gives Shakespeare ideas? Doctor Who in an unhappy love story? Doctor Who receives the gift of peace at Christmas? Involved stuff featuring the mountains above the citadel on Gallifrey with a lot of nonsense about time rewriting itself and enemies vanishing into paradox at the end?

No, those are unbroadcastably daft ideas.

Coal to Diamonds

Oh yeah and I wrote a radio sitcom pilot- I knew I'd been doing something.
It's called King Coney, but I may have still have to sit on it quite hard to make it shine.

In the beginning was the word and the word was Logos

New BBC Radio branding unveiled. Can't say I'm utterly sold- a bizarre combo of individuality and uniformity, I think.



Who said the pictures were better on radio? 4 and 7 both look a bit daft to me. I'll be imagining the old logos floating in mid-air when I listen from now on.
I wonder why the World Service has escaped the rebrand? Because BBC Radio World Service with a little globe in a circle would look and sound rubbish?