So we’ve just finished watching Murder By Numbers, the credits are rolling, I pause and say thoughtfully “well, I didn’t hate the film.”

For some reason Akra thinks this is funny…

The inlaws came down to babysit last night so Akra and I escaped to the cinema for the evening. I’ve been looking forward to seeing Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban ever since it came out and I heard that it was a much darker and better film than the previous two. However, I have to say that I was mildly disappointed.

Don’t get me wrong, it was an entertaining and enjoyable film. However, I dispute that it was better than the previous two and there were many areas which I felt were missed opportunities. I’ll place the rest of the discussion under the extended entry for those who haven’t seen the film yet…
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Watched The Italian Job last night. I’d never got around to seeing it and I was really missing out. What a great film! I so want a Mini Cooper now…

Can’t put my finger on what I enjoyed most. Was it the great performance by Michael Caine? The perfect example of understated British humour? Or could it be the ultimate in cliffhanger endings?! No, it was defintitely the car chase. I so want a Mini Cooper now…

Thought for the day:

The customer service mantra used to be something along the lines of: “A person who gets good service may tell one or two friends; a person who gets bad service will tell ten of their friends.”

Well it’s occured to me that the maxim is out of date in the internet age. It should now be: “A person who gets good service may tell one or two friends; a person who gets bad service blogs about it, posts to every available message board and sets up a yourcompanysucks.com URL with an audience of thousands!”

It never ceases to bring a warm glow when I check my stats and see the search hits I get for a certain bad value bathroom company. I like to hope that I’ve lost them one or two potential customers along the way… Hell hath no fury like a blogger ripped off…

I’ve been following the news reports on the cot death convictions fiasco for a while now but have felt reluctant to comment on it. What possible insight can I possibly have on these women’s pain? I have never lost a baby or even suffered a miscarriage, let alone been accused of being a murderer to boot.

The story on the Today programme this morning was heartbreaking though and brings up a distressing moral dilemma. It was an interview with a woman whose baby was removed from her at birth over fears that she had suffocated her first child. At the time of the court case, there were seven expert witnesses brought in to give evidence and only two were of the opinion that she was a danger to her child, yet these two witnesses were given more weight by the judge and the baby was taken into care.

Now the little girl is four years old and the mother is calling for a review in the case. But what happens next? As the girl’s mother herself said, her daughter doesn’t know her as “Mummy” – it would be horribly traumatic for the little girl to be taken away from her “parents” (who are currently in the process of adopting her) and yet what will be the emotional impact when she finds out when she is older that she was removed unnecessarily from the care of her natural mother? And what of the natural mother’s anguish in the meantime?

I don’t know what the “right” solution is – I’m not sure there is one. However, there is no escaping the fact that hundreds upon hundreds of lives have been ruined on the basis of unscientific testimony.

I don’t think any of us not directly involved can ever truly appreciate how deep that pain really is.

There isn’t much on television that shocks me anymore. I’m becoming fairly immune to the cheap “programming” that passes as entertainment (mainly by not bothering to actually watch any of it – why bother when you could get engrossed in a good computer game instead?) However, the latest reality TV offering, Shattered, has completely utterly amazed me – I’m even more stunned that there hasn’t been a national outcry yet.

Sleep deprivation is a very nasty thing. There’s a reason why it is used as a torture technique. Even just inadequate sleep can radically affect the brain – tests have shown that response times and brain response can be worse in a sleep deprived person than in a heavily intoxicated person. Regularly sleeping outside your normal body clock times (such as shift workers) has been shown for increased risk of various disorders including mental and psychological problems.

So what about no sleep whatsoever? Within 36-48 hours severe mental affects kick in – hallucinations, some effects similar to dementia, loss of memory, paranoia, suicidal feelings. For the seven days this “experiment” is running, it will almost certainly cause permanent brain damage and possibly a radical change of personality.

I’m sure that if this was a legitimate scientific experiment being run then it would have been exposed nationally as an ethical disgrace regardless of whether volunteers were chosen with full knowledge of what they were letting themselves in for. Instead, for a chance at a mere ?100,000 and the opportunity to appear on national TV it’s classed as “entertainment”. I’m certain the participants can’t know the full implications, as I sure as hell would want a lot more than ?100,000 for deliberately causing that much damage on myself.

I really hope the participants sue the hell out of the producers of the show when they’re out. You never know – if reality TV becomes a litigation nightmare, we may start getting quality programming again.

Some references:

Sleep Deprivation
Brain Basics: Understanding Sleep
The Effects of Sleep Deprivation on Brain and Behavior

When did New Year’s Eve stop being magical?

It’s December 31st again and it’s crept up on my unawares. I’m feeling cynical and jaded. What happened to the thrill of staying up and cheering in the New Year with a massive celebration with the naive hope that the next year is *bound* to be a better one?

I think part of it was that staying up to midnight was a rare event, an exciting exception to our daily life. These days being awake on the day’s switch over is common, despite all my best laid plans to have an early night. The days we get to sleep before 11pm are nothing short of a miracle.

We’ve had some great New Year’s parties, don’t get me wrong. One of my most fond memories of Croydon was a New Year’s party in the Dog & Bull. It was a closed-door free event – regulars only and it was fantastic. We knew everyone, the music was loud, the atmosphere merry… the best New Year ever. They had a repeat event the next year, only this time there was a charge and food was laid on. It just wasn’t the same, I’m not sure why – perhaps it’s part of the golden rule about never trying to repeat your most loved moments as it just doesn’t work.

Of course, with young children it gets even more complicated. A babysitter is expensive on a normal night, let alone on New Year’s Eve… if you’re lucky enough to get one of course. We could organise a party here of course, but that requires more effort and energy than I currently have. Christmas is over now… I’m looking forward to comfortable normality returning. That probably makes me incredibly dull (hint: this is the point where you all post reassuring things like “no, no, you’re not dull” in my comments, okay?)

There’s another sh1ft.org photo project, A Day In The Life… New Year’s Eve ’03, and I find myself torn. On the one hand, I’ve been really looking forward to another photo project – I’ve had such fun with the last ones I’ve done even if the photos didn’t turn out to be all that. I still love looking at them and have good memories of all of them. At the same time, with our current New Year plans (i.e. zilch) the chances are the pictures would be incredibly boring both to take and to view. Do I end up “staging” my own New Year’s celebration just to end up with something interesting to look at in years to come?

I feel a little depressed and guilty that we haven’t got anything organised, but the truth is, I don’t really feel the need to celebrate. It’s not that the last year was shit, or that I’m not looking forward to the next… I’m just looking forward to a “normal” night in, play some computer games with maybe some nice nibbles and a small glass of champers to make it just special enough. Maybe the next day we might start looking at getting some paint samples and decoration ideas for the spare room, but only if we feel bothered.

So why do I feel like we “ought” to make an occasion of it for forms sake?

father christmas

The doorbell rang last night. I opened it to face the two kids who came several days early for Halloween this year begging for chocolate when their only nod to the occasion was a couple of cheap plastic masks from Woolworths. This time, they opened into a very tuneless rendition of “We Wish You A Merry Christmas” and had made no attempt to dress up, no official charity box or anything.

WHAT?! Are carol singers the new Trick-or-Treaters?! We’ve survived the doorstep bribery for confectionary of October, the random firework flinging and “penny for the guy” of November and now we’ve reached December we’ve got kids coming to the door begging for cash after singing two lines! Please tell me January is a begging-free zone?

Living on a large modern estate, we get all the beggars come to ring our doorbell – some are more respectable than others: the “official” charity workers refusing to budge until you’ve signed your life away on a direct debit for a “good cause”, the youths from the local young offenders charity selling dusters and cleaning cloths, the gas company representatives who try to scam you by assuring you that you’re just signing “for further information”. You can’t open your door these days without someone trying to scam you for your hard earned dosh.

It gets to the point where you’d like to see some Jehovah’s Witnesses for a bit of variety.

Oh, and the “carol singers”? I laughed at them, said I wasn’t interested and closed the door on them. I haven’t had my house egged…. yet.

a christmas tree

It’s officially Christmas. I thought you’d like to know.

The Christmas presents are wrapped (except one for me, which apparently Akra got mailed to the wrong address… *sigh*), we’ve had a big roast chicken dinner with all trimmings including a glass of chilled white wine (oh, Akra Jr got water, and I’ve been sipping slowly and only allowed myself one glass, don’t panic), we’ve watched our official Christmas movie.

There’s something special about the definitive Christmas movie. It’s a very personal choice and is one that speaks to the heart and reflects our personality. Without seeing it, it doesn’t quite feel that it’s really Christmas. Now while I feel that such classics as It’s A Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street (whichever version) have their place, the definitive film for me is the all time great, The Muppet Christmas Carol.

You may laugh, but I believe this undervalued rough diamond is a must see for any family Christmas – the festive season just isn’t complete without it. Maybe it’s the classic tale of yuletide redemption brought to life by the considerable acting talents of Michael Caine, or maybe it’s just the comic genius of Rizzo the Rat. Either way, this is one magical journey you would be a fool to deprive yourself of.

Okay, okay … I confess. I just have a soft spot for skating penguins.

We received our very first DVDs On Tap DVD yesterday. So, we settled down to watch Star Trek: Nemesis – a film that we’d never quite got around to seeing at the cinema.

I’d become rather disenchanted with Star Trek films – the recent ones weren’t very memorable and often the actors were completely out of character compared to the TV series – something that irked greatly. However, with this latest release I was very pleasantly surprised to find that they’d refound the old Star Trek magic for this last foray with the Next Gen crew.

The nice thing about movies of TV shows is that you can generally forgo the slow character introductions at the beginning of the film and leap straight into the plot. This was no exception and I was gripped early on. The baddy for this film wasn’t stereotypically evil and was a far more well-rounded character, and together with a well-paced plot with some fantastic effects thrown into the mix and I would happily compare this to the greatness of the Star Trek: Wrath of Khan film. It’s made me want to go watch all the series again (in particular the last season of Voyager, which I never saw, thanks to a brief appearance by the now Admiral Janeaway).

All in all, excellent entertainment – what a shame I never went to see it on a big screen!