The ghost got the nod

With 100% of the votes I start my latest blog with a rave about Hex http://www.skyone.co.uk/programme/pgeProgramme.aspx?pid=5 . We are 2 episodes into the 2nd season of Sky One's occult/fantasy drama. It's been compared with Buffy, but it's cleverer, darker, more complicated and funnier than Buffy ever was. Where it does compare is that neither were afraid to have lesbian characters. In the case of Hex there is a twist. Thelma, who suffers the pain of unrequited love in the form of Cassie, was killed violently and unexpectedly in episode 2 of season 1.

But thankfully that wasn't the last we were to see of her. For reasons that I shall not go into she was prevented from entirely leaving this world and is now a lesbian ghost. Her unrequited love now even less likely to be requited. One benefit that this wise-cracking ghostie has found is that she can eat all the chocolate she wants without any impact on her ghostly shape. Alas she was murdered in a tasteless party dress and doomed to wear it for the whole of season 1. Season 2 at least brought a change of clothes.

So what makes Hex so good? Well the dialogue is fantastic for starters (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0423668/quotes). The casting is terrific, and the complexity of the mythology/back story just draws you in. Season 2 has taken things further - new characters, massive plot developments and shock upon shock - at the end of episode 2 Cassie was killed. Tear jerking stuff as Cassie passed away with Thelma desperately trying touch her hand as she died. To kill the lead character takes balls, but of course there will be twists to come, and in the meantime we have an amazingly sexy new character in Ella to drive the plot forward.

There are so many nice touches with Hex that it is hard to articulate what makes it so good. Thelma discovering another lesbian ghost from the 1920's was superb. You've just got to love dialogue like:


Thelma Bates: So, what are you doing here?
Peggy: Actually my father used to own this place?
Thelma Bates: Oh. Sorry.
Peggy: I died here in 1923. I'd like to say my husband caught me with the scullery maid, but actually it was the flu. How about you?
Thelma Bates: I was ritualistically sacrificed by a fallen angel.
Peggy: Ah, the flu, too, eh?

Apparently Thelma is to get another love interest this season. Hopefully it will be done well - it has thusfar - Libertas said: "one of the best lesbian characters to have hit our TV screens in a mainstream programme in some time". But there is so much more to Hex than sexuality, although the ways of the flesh have been rather a theme in the show since Cassie was impregnated by a fallen angel.

Hex is part Omen, part Carrie, part Buffy, part Randall and Hopkirk, and totally brilliant. Of course now I've raved about it it will probably be rubbish from now onwards. The same happened with Moonlighting I recall.

Last Sunday as I watched episode 2 I actually found myself shouting at the tv trying to warn Cassie that Azazeal was nearby, I found myself holding my breath due to tension, and i had to fight back tears. What a show!

So much...

...to write about I don't know where to start. So here are some topics and I'll get round to writing them up in due course.

- The formation of the National Union of Mascots
- The return of Hex and the world's coolest lesbian ghost
- My Guernsey muppet experience
- Paint woes

If anyone has a preference let me know and I'll do my best to write about the one that interests them most

Ghosts

Do I believe in ghosts? You know I'm not sure. Wegg (http://wegglywoo.blogspot.com/2005/09/shades.html) wrote a blog that evoked some memories from my childhood. I thought I'd share them cos either I was weird or my experiences were weird - and I'm not sure which.

The first occurance happened when I was aged around 6. I had been off school for almost 2 weeks with Hand, Foot and Mouth disease, but by the time of the occurence I was pretty much recovered except for the blister-like marks that come with the disease. I only state this because it could be a possible explanation.

Anyway, I was off school and had been doing a jigsaw. At that time there wasn't much in the way of daytime tv and in the early afternoon there would be no programmes at all apart from the occasional schools programme.

On this day the tv was off, I was sitting on the sofa doing my jigsaw when I saw, reflected in the tv, the lounge door open and a girl walk in. She was my sort of age and height-wise judging by the reflection she would have been about 4-5 feet high. I turned around and the door was closed and there was no girl.

I looked back at the tv and she was still there, standing just inside the doorway. I went over to the tv (no remotes in those days) and turned it on, thinking there might be some fault and a programme was somehow being displayed. It wasn't - there was only the test card. So I switched the tv off and once the screen had calmed itself down I noticed that she was still there, standing in the same position. I looked closer and noticed she had a tartan skirt on. I don't remember what else she wore but i remember she had long hair.

By this point I was pretty freaked out. I left the room and went into the kitchen where my mum was (she always seemed to be there). We went back into the lounge but she couldn't see anything on the tv or elsewhere. I could, the girl was still there. I confess that I burst into tears and refused to stay in that room. The next day when I went into the lounge there was no girl but I remain convinced to this day that I saw her. Who she was, I have no idea.

The second occurance was stranger still. I was still young, under 10 but I'm not sure how young. I went into my parents' bedroom and on the other side of the room, sitting on an ottoman (a chest not a Turkish person) were my two Great-Aunts. I recognised them instantly. I said hello to them, they said nothing but just smiled. I went into the kitchen (yep she was there again) and asked my mum what Auntie Nel and Autie Eileen were doing there and why I hadn't been told they were coming. She just looked blank and said that she didn't know what i was talking about.

I went back to her bedroom determined to bring them out and prove that they were there, but alas nothing. They had gone. I can still see them now in my minds eye, as clear as day.

Of course it would make a great ending to the story if I said that we found out that evening they had both died that day, but that wasn't the case. Nel died 5 years or so later and Auntie Eileen only died about 3 or 4 years ago at the venerable age of 92.

In both of these cases I know what I saw, and I can still picture those moments very clearly even now. What the explanations are I don't know. Perhaps I was able to tap into something unworldly, perhaps I was bonkers. We shall probably never know.

This is what it should have been like back in July...

...when we won the Olympic bid. We should have had a rosey glow for days on end. The joy of seeing the victory scenes replayed endlessly on tv. The reams of press coverage. The sheer unadulterated feelgood factor.

Well back in July 4 guys with bombs put a stop to that, but only temporarily. The win for the England cricket team in the Ashes is perhaps all the more sweet as the series was born in the immediate aftermath of the terror attacks. Where was the fear on Tuesday as hundreds of thousands of people crammed the streets of London and Trafalgar Square to cheer their Cricketing heroes? Let's also not forget that the England women's team won back the Ashes after a gap of over 40 years.

So even on this grey, rainy miserable day - there is still a lingering afterglow of Summer in the feelgood factor created by a bunch of guys who slapped leather with willow.

Damn those pesky Australians...

can't they just roll over and let us have the Ashes? I know they are a one man team (Warne) but they've really disrupted the whole working day today. Half of us were listening to the cricket via our pcs and the rest were asking us what the score was.

Don't these Aussies know that some of us have work to do?

;)

So here's the dilemma...

I love where I work, I like the people and I get great job satisfaction from what I do. However, changes are afoot. It looks likely that increased funding is coming our way which means that as an organisation we will expand. We will fill posts that have never been filled but have always been on our organisation chart, and we will be a more dynamic and effective charity. The downside for me is that whilst the rest of the organisation grows, my role will contract.

Due to the lack of staff and resources I have had to get involved in all manner of things outside of my job description. I have dealt with the Government and the unemployed, worked on national policy matters as well as event management - the list goes on. For the last 4 years I have loved this diversity, and yet because we as an organisation are about to get what we have always wanted, I will perversely lose much if not all of the work that lies outside of my job description - the very stuff taht I love the most.

So stop moaning you say. You will be doing what's in your job spec so what have you got to complain about? Well I suppose I haven't, and to be fair I'm not. If I was given a choice between my charity staying the same size or getting new funds and growing I would take the latter option every time. But what is best for the organisation is not necessarily best for me.

So I have started the process of looking for something else. I'm in no rush, and the change management process over the next couple of years would prove interesting enough if I were to stay. But if the right opportunity comes along I think I will take it. I'll keep you posted.

marriage and memories

When I was younger, I had more crushes than Big Daddy wrestling Ronnie Corbett. I got used to the girls I fancied being with other guys, often complete muppetts who treated them appallingly. I hoped they'd get sick of the b*stards (their words), and when pouring their hearts out to me about yet another let-down they'd realise that I wasnt like that. I always comforted myself with the thought that girlfriends and boyfriends split up, it's not a permanent thing.

Well now all these year's later I am happily in a long term relationship. And last night I went out with an old friend and her fiance. I used to fancy her (please note: used) but long since got over it. So now she is getting married, and her fiance is a really nice bloke - not a b*stard, just a regular guy. But I couldn't help thinking: If you are happy to settle down with this guy, how the hell did I miss out all those year's ago? Why did you persist with b*stards for all that time when I was ready to worship the ground you walked on?

Of course there are no palatable answers to such questions, and perhaps I am better off not knowing the truth. So after a very pleaseant evening hearing about wedding plans and catching up on gossip I retired home to my girfriend, who I love, without regretting how things have turned out.

More on Katrina

Britain isn't perfect, I don't think any country is or can be. But I would like to think that our Government would respond to a New Orleans-eque disaster in a much more effective fashion than the Bush administration.

In fact I am pretty sure they would. I have a friend who did a Phd in disaster management. He's now working in the Foreign Office (and not really in a disaster management role) and yet when the bombs went off on 7/7 he was drafted in immediately to help deal with the situation. To me that shows a rapid and intellegent use of human resources in a crisis situation and it is very comforting.

I found this quote from American political commentator Bob Schieffer:

"Finally, a personal thought. We have come through what may have been one of the worst weeks in America's history, a week in which government at every level failed the people it was created to serve. There is no purpose for government except to improve the lives of its citizens. Yet as scenes of horror that seemed to be coming from some Third World country flashed before us, official Washington was like a dog watching television. It saw the lights and images, but did not seem to comprehend their meaning or see any link to reality.

As the floodwaters rose, local officials in New Orleans ordered the city evacuated. They might as well have told their citizens to fly to the moon. How do you evacuate when you don't have a car? No hint of intelligent design in any of this. This was just survival of the richest."

This tickled me

Not so much the news itself, but the sense of humour with which the article is written.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20050828/wl_uk_afp/britainaustriaoffbeat