Alasdair Watson

I don’t know what it is about this time of year, but for some reason life conspires to throw a fistful of Edinburgh at me in autumn, just to fuck with my head. Every year. Paul’s moving back there the other day is just the latest in this year’s parade. And despite the fact that I settled in London a few years back (as in, I decided to stop trying to move back to Scotland), I’m still tempted to just up sticks and leave, and sort everything out when I get there.

I don’t think I’ll do it this year, but one of these days…

I’m organised. See, November and December are expensive months for me. Both my flatmates, my brother, and my girlfriend have birthdays in that period, and then there’s Christmas…

Here, at the start of October, I have bought/know what I’m getting for: my brother (both for birthday and Christmas) Fin (for her birthday and Christmas) Andrew (for his birthday) and my Dad (for Christmas). I’ve got a few ideas about what to get Marysia, too, although I’m going to wait and see if any better ideas present themselves in the next couple of months. By my count, then, the only person for whom I don’t at least have plans is my Mother, who, as per, will not give me any idea of the sort of thing she wants, but at least I know that M&S vouchers are always acceptable with her.

Whoever it is that’s using the orbital mind-control lasers to achieve this effect is doing a good job.

Well, that’s mostly true. Autumn is showing signs of arriving at bleeding last, so the leather coat is out of summer mothballs, and I’ve got energy again. Summer is just fatal to me. I get nothing done. I’ve had another one of those ideas that everyone I mention it to wants to see done, which almost certainly means it’ll die on it’s arse, so in an attempt to make sure it goes somewhere, I’m going to get together with my brother, and as many mad bastards as we can rope into it, and try and make a short film out of it.

At the moment, I have nothing but bad scratches of tonal dialogue, and a small pile of source material to go from, so expect to hear nothing more of this until there’s actually something written down.

In the meantime, I’m still contemplating NaNoWriMo – if I got for it, I suspect that I’ll fall a way short of the target, but it might kick the dust off some of my more painfully atrophied writing synapses. But something that gets me back into the practice of writing daily cannot be a bad idea.

Fox are being sued by people claiming that they pitched the idea for the LoEG movie to Fox years ago, and that the final film and their version are so similar are to be lawsuit worthy.

Normally, I’d just be laughing, but here’s the stuff that makes this interesting: these people aren’t just cranks. One of them wrote Phone Booth, and the other produced The Lion In Winter. They’re Hollywood professionals. (This does not preculde them being cranks, obviously.) The presumably think that they were ripped off, or at least that it looks enough like it that they stand a chance of making cash in court.

But the bit that makes me laugh is that they’re suggesting that Fox suggested that Moore write LoEG so that they could option it, to create a smokescreen by which they would rip these boys off. I wonder how they intend to prove that, given that they’re talking about a reculse whose interest in Hollywood seems to stop at them giving him and option cheque if they want to mutilate some of his work and they getting out of his life.

It’s possible, of course, that Fox saw Moore’s work, and did indeed think that they could option it then use it as cover to rip off these boys – it’d explain why the movie seems to bear fuck-all resemblance to the comic, but given that Moore’s a magician and prone to talking about any creative act being an act of magic makes it seem unlikely that he takes commisions…

Playing ULU on the 7th of November. Anyone want to come? (Tickets available here.)

I’m in Northern Ireland, so my internet access is spotty at best – I return home Monday night, and will catch up with my communications then.

Spent yesterday up on the Antrim coast at Bushmills, and the Giant’s Causeway, and Carrick-a-Rede. I’ve taken half a hundred shots on the phonecam, so it’ll cost me a fortune to decant them. I’ll go through ’em later and weed out the good ones. It’s a couple of years since I was there, and I’m glad to go back – it’s possibly the most beautiful place in the world to me.

Went out last night with my cousin and his pals, and wound up at Limelight, playing the “legal, not legal” game. The average age there seems to be about 17, and that was only after the bunch of us twenty somethings and early thirties people had raised it a year or two. A real “Fuck You, I Won’t Tidy My Bedroom” place. Good laugh, though. In the past, we’ve wound up there thanks to my youngest cousin, who turned 20 the other month. This time round, it was bizarre co-incidence, but it wouldn’t be a trip to Beflast without seeing what the Young People dance to these days. The answer seems to be that they dance to exactly the same things I did, which is odd, because at least they were current when I was out, rather than most of a decade old, and more…

Right. Enough. See you all when I get back.

According to the Society for Psychical Research, mobile phones kill ghosts (via Gizmodo). I find the idea quite depressing, actually.

Johnny Cash

And it’s back to work with me. Well, on Monday at least. For three days, then I’m off for a long weekend in Belfast, to visit my ageing grandmother. It’s a rough old life. Fame Academy results show in half an hour, then I’m debating what to do – bed with some comics (got a couple of longboxes out of my parents garage the other day, and am going through them deciding what to keep and what to get rid of), a spot of NWN, or perhaps watching a bit of Sherlock Holmes – I discovered that the ITV series with Jeremy Brett as Holmes is out on DVD, and since my brother and I are talking about a Holmesian sort of thing for a short film, I bought one there and then, and have been enjoying them and pulling them apart in equal measure, trying to work out just how damaged I can get away with making our detective without rendering him incapable of social functioning…

Well, that’s the weekend over, but I don’t care, because I’ve got the week off work. Huzzah! Plans include a trip to the Tower of London at some point, to see the ravens (Marysia and Andrew are completely unimpressed by prospect of Ravens, or at least, not impressed enough to pay the entrance fee. I live with philistines…) but since I haven’t had a break since last Christmas, I’m mostly just going to laze about not do very much.

In other news, it’s Fin and I have been dating for a year and day now. Not entirely sure how that happened, as it only seems like yesterday that we were watching Rififi and eating at Ed’s on our first date. To celebrate, we went to see The Woman In Black at the Fortune Theatre, and then out for dinner at a fairly posh restaurant in Covent Garden – I can safely say I’ve never eaten anywhere that posh before, and while I can’t afford to do it every time, I think it was well worth it – the food was uniformly excellent and the service fantastic, but the to-die-for chocolate souffle I had for dessert would have justified it on it’s own.

Right. Well, I’m off to make a drink and think about reading for a bit.