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Tom Baker was 88 today and I am delighted he’s still going and hasn’t regenerated. I worked with him back in 91 or 92 on Lionel Nimrod, thirty years ago and it’s another little jolt of a shock to realise that he was 57 or 58 back then. He seemed so legendary to us then that you’d think he had been going for ever. To realise he was more or less the same age as I am now, that if I guested on a young person’s radio show I would be similarly from such a distant generation, is a bit mind-blowing. But I guess I am not really processing the fact that I’m a fucking ancient relic of a human being. Another 30 years of this madness would be nice though.
Happy Birthday Tom. What a well-lived life and what happiness you have brought to the world.
Mainly work again today, as I prepped briefly for Twitch of Fun and moved onwards with the book. Closing in on 20,000 words now and hoping I can do another 20,000 in the next 10 days, so that I am halfway to the proposed word count by my original deadline. I have about 20,000 words of blogs from the time in a document, so it’s not beyond possibility.
Twitch of Fun was a nice and relaxed return to the show, apart from the horrifying new puppet created by Phoebe Herring, which I will just warn you, appears in the first few minutes and the show is not suitable for those of a nervous disposition. It made some unpleasant predictions about my week ahead, so fingers crossed it doesn’t have real powers.
The show fizzled out towards the end, but was full of energy and had some nice ideas in the early part. How much longer will it carry on? Forever obviously.
After the show I tried to put together a set of office drawers I’d got for my new (drawer-less) desk. I could have paid £85 for the man who delivered them to assemble them, but as that was half the price of what the furniture cost, it seemed a bit much. Surely I could follow basic instructions.
Well no, I couldn’t. Because the instructions were terrible and vague and also I am useless. All the parts had letters or numbers in the instructions and it might have been helpful if there were stickers on the actual pieces that corresponded so you’d know which was the left side and which was the right side without having to do mental gymnastics (which I am unable to do, due to my aphantasia, once again society is prejudiced against sufferers). I tried to attach the drawer rollers to the sides, but it wasn’t clear if they were meant to be flush against the edge or which one went on which side and which way up. I am not stupid, well I am not completely stupid, but I think it would be really helpful if instruction leaflets really patronised you and went through each stage in agonising detail, rather than have one diagram, showing then item from too much of a distance, and not giving any real clue of where things are meant to go.
I will leave it for a proper man to do for me, who won’t charge £85. But I have hands and eyes so I reckon this sort of thing shouldn’t be beyond me.
I guess it’s too late for me to become adept at this sort of thing, though to be fair, I usually get further than this.
Today’s wordle and a conversation with a director for an upcoming project reminded me of
this from Meaning of Life. It’s a little sprawling and if we had more time to film it I would have liked to refine my performance a little bit, though Rachel Stubbings is excellent and genuinely moving in the final part. But at least I got there first (or more or less) as a few people have explored this idea subsequently. Worth a look if you missed it first time.
