Random News

[gervase_fen]

Two e-mails - one from the solicitors looking after the estate of my grandmother.  A moment of disassociation.  "I would you like to confirm that yourself and your brothers... are co-benificiaries of your grandmother's estate". It's the sort of thing I''ve read in countless Golden Age crime novels, the plot engine of reams of Victorian fiction.

The second from Dad, who via a retired police officers mailing list has been contacted by a researcher working on behalf of BBC2.  They are making a documentary about the miner's strike, and she wanted to know which pits he attended. He told her the story about how Dougal, Tom's beloved teddy bear, was kidnapped by fellow officers and held to ransom, a story covered in full (naturally) by the Dumont Express.  The researcher was very interested in this. (I'm not sure that Dougal is around to enjoy his moment in the sun though.)  I await further developments.

I should really try to pull together an appreciation post about Warship - the YouTube uploads have some fascinating comments underneath them from people who were inspired to join the Navy because of the series, and Ian Mackintosh is, when on form, a superb precinct dramatist. Michael E Briant's biography is candid about his experiences on the programme - as with Doctor Who scripts from other writers were extensively rewritten by Mackintosh, and the ones which weren't are obvious (Robert Holmes, I'm thinking of you.)  We enjoyed the series so much that I showed Sheena The Harvest of Kairos, purely to see Andrew Burt play the antithesis of his lovelorn and sensitive Lieutenant Peek.

Work is just this side of bearable. The air conditioning helps.  The 4 x 10 hour  shifts do not. (My contract is 30 hours!)