Stop the week

Is ‘Stop the Week’ still on?

If I recall correctly, it was a chat show on Radio 4 – the companion show to ‘Start the Week’ – which would feature various high brow arty intellectuals, luvvy actors, literary authors with a book to plug discretely and the occasional token scientist, unpicking the events of the week in a light hearted sort of way.

Anyhoo, can we stop this particular week, please? It seems to have simultaneously dragged and flown by in equal measure. Getting up early on cold, dark mornings has been a shock to my system, not surprisingly, and has left me jiggered – falling asleep on the sofa on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings – but I seem to be re-adjusting bit by bit.

The slightly odd mood of the week started with watching ‘Barton Fink’ – a Coen brothers movie that I hadn’t seen before, and a rather good one too. I had been expecting a comedy of sorts, but the off-beat nature caught me by surprise. The use of unsettling, almost subliminal, background noises and the skewed perspective of the cinematography made the slow descent of the eponymous playwright, turned Hollywood screenwriter into his own, very personal, hell all the more convincing. Probably not one to watch if you have a fear of writer’s block.

Work has been pretty good on the whole, although our Subversion source control system has been running like treacle this week. I fixed one bug which was literally a one character change – switching the test for a return flag from ‘0’ to ‘1’ – which took nearly half an hour of code branching, committing and then merging back into the main code trunk, all dead time watching update windows chuntering. Hopefully the tech bods will sort it out, otherwise my coffee intake is going to increase as there is nothing much to do whilst these admin tasks are running other than to make hot drinks.

Yesterday was an odd day.

Next door’s pet rabbit had escaped sometime on the previous day, and Barney the dog had found the corpse of the luckless bun and buried it in a corner of our garden. We don’t know if it had expired of natural causes, or if he had chased it. There were no teeth-marks or obvious signs of injury, so he hadn’t bitten or mauled it first. All a bit upsetting really, although the neighbours have been fine about it and not as worried about it as we were.

Back to Kobudo last night for the first time in a month, and it certainly blew the cobwebs away. My samurai sword kata was a bit rusty, to say the least, but it will come back. However, you really can’t beat training with three black belts for sharpening up your skills. I got to play with Bo vs Naginata for a while, and then some work on the eight Wakizashi techniques that I need for level two sword. I picked up a fun new one that includes a cut with a concealed reversed blade to the inside of the opponent’s sword arm, followed by a swift disembowelling stab to their stomach. Lovely.

What else?

The ‘In Our Time’ podcasts about the life and work of Charles Darwin have been most interesting this week, and well worth a download. They have inspired me to read ‘Origin of Species’ which is being collaboratively blogged over at Blogging the Origin. This will also count towards my not-a-resolution book-a-week tally for 2009 (one book down, three others all at around 50% completion so far). Could this be the new obsession to replace Nano? Could be.

Telly wise, I was rather disappointed with ‘Demons’ – the various demonic villains of the piece were far more interesting than the bland lead character (whose name I can’t even remember), and all Phillip Glennister needed to do in his ‘Watcher from Buffy Lite’ role was reprise Gene Hunt as a vampire slayer (“Oi! You’re staked you slag!”) rather than attempting a bizarre and oddly unnecessary American accent. A missed opportunity.

The prog rock documentaries and music on BBC4 were much better though, with a remarkable vintage live performance of ‘Tubular Bells’ played by various po faced beardy hippies who all seemed to be inexplicably wearing tank tops (which I refuse to believe were ever fashionable, even in the 1970s). Also fun to see clips of such sundry crimes against music as Peter Gabriel poncing around dressed as a daisy and Rick Wakeman’s bonkers King Arthur on Ice. Even though my heart belongs to the essential purity of punk, I do have a sneaking fondness for the pomposity of prog.