This is just not good enough. The infrequent updates to this blog since I joined Facebook and later Twitter is ridiculous. My apologies.

Since last we've moved house, to lovely Ealing from dreadful Stratford (well, it was quickly turning into a hell-hole). I spent all of my savings on the move, and am now spending my time whining about the lack of money. And the cold. Because, friends, I have turned into a Brit. Well, almost. Also, this house is bloody cold all year round. Brilliant if it's scorching outside, but whenever does that actually happen in good ol' Blighty? Well, just about once or twice a year. (I haven't heard of rhetorical questions.)

My job seems insecure; they keep moving people around, others quit and I'm left in the dark as per usual. This started happening just about two seconds after we signed the contract for this place, of course. Fuck you. Anyway, I'm pretending nothing is going on. Alcohol helps. Also, lashes of good telly. We've kept ourselves busy lately (re)watching Fringe, Hornblower, then Sharpe, and next up is a disturbing combination of Eureka, Upstairs, Downstairs (good luck with that before this autumn's revisit to 165 Eaton Place, 35 years after the last series was produced), Dexter and Lie to Me. We'll just have to see.

I think I may have been to the theatre once this year...only I cannot for the life of me remember what that could have been. Maybe it was just a dream.

My plan for tomorrow is to win the top prize in the EuroMillions. Don't know how else I'm going to get any funds.

However, this is merely a bleak, selfish view on things and my life is much better than most others', it's just very annoying that Life is so attached to Money. The Bastard Twins.

In other news, I have been enjoying a lot of brilliant telly and gaming lately, and more is yet to come! Of course Downton Abbey is an important feature on Sundays in this household, although it is being taped for the simple reason that it's on ITV (read: ad breaks) whereas the excellent Single Father (read: David Tennant) is on the Beeb (read: no ad breaks) at the same time. Thank Bob we don't we don't have Sky (can't afford a satellite dish AS WELL), because then we'd have to have a second DVD recorder to tape Thorne on Sky1. Not that it had great reviews, but I quite like David Morrissey. Speaking of which, my old DVD recorder is on the blink (in a "Panasonic-on-the-blink" kind of way, which means it gives out weird error messages now and then but works as it should...most of the time. Sony FTW!), so I have got hold of a few blank DVDs to save the contents of the hard drive. OK, so I got 300. I am very impressed with Total Blank Media; they shipped my DVDs nine minutes after my order was accepted! The most important bit was that they carry Taiyo Yuden DVDs, of course. And yes, I did the "smell test" once I got the discs. Mmmm.

What was I saying? Oh, something about telly shows. Hmm... Right. We're watching 71 Degrees North (a title which should be familiar to Norwegians out there), mostly in order to have a laugh at what we deem to be whiny British celebs trying to survive in minus 40 degrees. HA HA HAAAH! Then again, I've never camped outside in anything below zero (centigrades) myself. #NorwegianGirlGuideFAIL

Well, at least I've managed to pay the gas bill.

You can still cry at my tweets and my new gaming blog (well, it's my main interest, anyway; may as well cave in).

Labels: david tennant, gaming, Norway, personal, TV

Dear Steven Moffat,

You wasted my childhood with Press Gang, my teens with Chalk, my twenties with Coupling and now my thirties with Doctor Who, apparently. Will you ever stop making such bloody brilliant stories?

As a fervent believer in everything Tenth Doctor-y (some relation to "Allons-y"), I wasn't even going to watch the fifth series which started yesterday. Matt Smith hadn't exactly made the best first, second or third impression on me. But then Twitter went completely mad for the new episode and the curiosity in me won. The iPlayer had to be loaded, first on the Wii (after a brief stint of Super Mario Kart'ing) and then the remainder on the PS3 (because the fucked-up neighbour started one of his all-night parties again). And I was, literally, at the edge of my seat already after ten minutes. Four minutes in and I had a proper laugh! The heresy!

So, prompted by this very vivid and entertaining dream I had last night where I went to a school reunion and only recognised about half of the people there; the other half slowly morphed into various actors or characters, such as Rik Mayall (having an argument with my dad and trying to seduce me at the same time), James Earl Jones (doing a bit of gardening), someone called Nis Kemp (he had been a Dutch exchange student in our class) and at least five of the previous Doctors (including David Tennant, although he was already there as a guest of mine, going on and on and on about how dry the chicken was--in his defence he had just flown in from Scotland entirely on his own (I believe he actually flew, and not in a plane, either); I decided to do a little bit of soul-searching and Doctor Who-analysing.

I am going to be totally honest here, and say that prior to Doctor Who, Russell T. Davies only meant Queer as Folk to me (and, thus, the person who taught me what "rimming" was; I sort of wish I didn't know), so I wasn't overly enthusiastic when I heard he was writing the reborn Doctor Who. This is also the reason why I never watched Torchwood, advertised as the more adult-oriented, semi-raunchy version of Doctor Who, until the five-parter last year, "Children of Earth". Chris Eccleston was basically a guy I had liked in Our Friends in the North and that episode of the brilliant Cracker where I was also introduced to Robert Carlyle. Billie Piper was just someone who'd made a couple of hits back in the late nineties. Doctor Who itself had been a children's programme institution for forty years. I wasn't exactly sold on the idea. To top it off, Radio Times were featuring the show way too often, so I was satiated even before I had seen a single episode.

When David Tennant took over as the Doctor, I referred to him as "that creepy guy from Secret Smile". I had missed Blackpool. I still wasn't interested. Then Catherine Tate, hot shot of the year, was going to feature in the Christmas special. I thought I'd have a look. It was alright, but I must have drifted off halfway through, as when I rewatched it recently, I couldn't even remember the second half of the episode. I started watching the series properly by series four, when they reintroduced Donna Noble. And I was captivated. I was particularly in love with the episodes "Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead". I then watched the specials of 2009. The last episode was so heartbreaking and I didn't even know who half of those people were! Thanks to BBC3, I quickly knew. I watched the repeats starting with season two. I loved "The Girl in the Fireplace", "Gridlock", "Human Nature"/"The Family of Blood" and "Blink".

Incidentally, most of my favourite episodes were penned by a...Steven Moffat.

Now, let's face it: The Ninth Doctor (Chris Eccleston) was the abrasive rocker Doctor. The Tenth Doctor (David Tennant) was the soul-searching, pained, heart-broken action man Doctor. The Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith)? Looks to go back to the roots. He's the absent-minded, curious, eccentric Doctor. I do believe Monsieur Moffat has found his way back to the essence of the original idea.

Oh, and the new TARDIS? Bloody love it! I only wish I was ten again, growing up with THAT playground to gawk and drool at every Saturday tea-time.

David Tennant will still be "my" Doctor, though. As an incurable romantic I love/loathe the whole Rose/Doctor story, even with its horrible Norwegian breaking up the mood for me. Twice. ("Dårlig Ulv Stranden"? REALLY?)

Labels: david tennant, TV

It has dawned on me that I may as well realise that my "Doctor Who" fascination wasn't really just a fascination with the Doctor as such, but more of a David Tennant thing. Which, of course, is slightly annoying in the sense that he will never "just" be a terrific actor from now on (because I've liked him as an actor since I first noticed him in Secret Smile back in 2005), but "someone a bit more special", even though this obsession will pass in a few months' time (or sooner, depending on how intense the obsession is.)

Then again, my complete inability to throw away stuff has served me well, in that I yesterday found no less than 46 Doctor Who-related RadioTimes in my "collection", including six Doctor Who audiobooks, and today I've found tonnes of old radio shows featuring David Tennant. The trouble is I think he is really funny (and three shows with Catherine Tate filling in for Jonathan Ross may actually kill me, as they're bloody funny and all--I'm actually crying while listening to them), so this may take some time. Then again, last year's two obsessions (Chris Barrie and Reece Shearsmith, respectively) have passed quite smoothly, as well as 2008's big Greg Proops thing (although they'll still have a special place in my heart and may have guest appearances now and then.)

Oh, anyway. Today's big topic has been the budget, and I'm all out of funny comments already. Mainly because it's a bit shit.

Also, I've tried my hand at writing stuff today. Not for the first time, mind. One of these days I'm sure HarperCollins will be knocking on my door. Not that I'll hear them, as I'm sure my neighbour will drown out all sounds with his stereo, as per usual, the little runt.

Labels: chris barrie, david tennant, greg proops, personal, reece shearsmith, TV, writing