Cold and wet

Another day, another cold. Yes I've been bitten again! It's another bloody cold and just in the middle of the School Census at work. And know I know my coordination and focus is all up the spout. Off to bed for hibernation again. And you wouldn't believe hos many tiumwes ive retypex this bloody medsdage! That last was typed without correction at all.

Fishy Weather

.. and let all those who dwel in the house of "Met Department" chant the words "Earlier on today, apparently, a woman rang the BBC and said she heard there was a hurricane on the way... well, if you're watching, don't worry, there isn't!" until the storm abates.

Yes another blast from the Atlantic, this time with winds recorded up to 99mph. Of course from most of western and northern Scotland's point of view a gentle breeze but for us in England a Typhoon of unimaginable proportions followed by Armageddon with wind and waves and tiles down. Of course it has been pretty bad but we saw it coming and still had problems. Trees on the line are due to trees being allowed to grow to big and too close to the line. Leaves are caused by the same thing so a bit of management along the lines wouldn't go amiss. Roofs down caused by poor design. Scaffolding wobbling as plastic sheeting covering it caught the wind. Generally the wind wasn't too bad and many problems were of our own making.

The press love it though. It's almost knocked the Big Brother racism allegations off the front pages - I wonder what is going on at the moment that is not being reported, I really do. What bad news is being buried at the moment?

Buffywood

I felt very confused at the last couple of episodes of Torchwood. Sorry I may rant! Capt Jack Harkness Cute wasn’t he? A nice simple episode that would have been much better slightly earlier in the season with greater and greater disturbances in the rift. Oddly though no mention of the events in the execrable Fight Club episode ‘Combat’ and his bestial intimidation of the Weevils by Owen who suddenly decided that opening the rift was the way to get his girlfriend back.. We had no real explanation of the equation which could get them back and no real explanation of why they were there. Bilas had no real back story which was a real shame given his pivotal nature. Lovely chap playing Jack and the dance was very sweet if, sadly, bollocks. Still don’t know quite what happened at the end with smoky time tunnel. End of Days - Potentially a good start with people dropping out of time and diseases showing up. Sadly it went downhill from there…All of them received visitations from people they knew telling them to open the rift apart from Gwen, who had her boyfriend killed by the man who suggested that she open the rift. Jack didn’t get a visit. I have no idea why any of them listened to any of the visitations without working out that someone with no good in mind wanted the rift open. Also why any of them thought opening the rift would put things right is logic that is questionable at best. (The fact that it did is even more questionable). The beast rose and sadly was not terribly well executed. The best bit of it was the life sucking shadow. I just wish they’d done what Doctor Who always used to do (and occasionally still does) which is create a cheap monster by being inventive. You hear me Mr Davies? INVENTIVE! That doesn’t mean creating space ships over London/Cardiff, huge Dalek/Cybermen battles etc. It sometimes means having an invasion that’s a bit more subtle. Or open to different interpretation. One thing I liked about the original Doctor Who was that invasions went unnoticed. People were paralysed, away from the events etc which always more plausible. I was entertained by the Runaway Bride but it clearly showed where the major plot problems were going to be with Donna having a hangover and missing the Sycorax and then being in Spain so missing the Daleks and Cybermen. And now we have The Sarah Jane Adventures where they ‘don’t believe in aliens’ which, if they’d had Cybermen in the house they should have been easily convinced.Anyway, the story so far, half of Cardiff is trampled or had the life sucked out of it. I wonder if that’ll come up at some time. Jack has the life bestowed by Bad Wolf sucked out of him conveniently (which does imply that Rose planned the whole thing) and we don’t know whether he’s human again or not. Everyone is forgiven for their part in destroying most of Cardiff and trying to kill Jack. Then he gets whisked away by the Doctor which is a bit weak It’s a bit weird that Gwen ‘knows’ he’s been taken rather than checking the rest of the base and the whole thing seemed a bit tacked on. Honestly I just wished they’d picked up Jack in Doctor Who rather than have him leave in Torchwood.

Deep blue ocean, deep blue ocean, deep blue ocean! There, that's better. Sorry for the rant but I've been getting quite annoyed with Torchwood's chopping and changing of story priorities. I thought that the idea of someone in control was to keep control rather than run in several directions at one. Worrying when Sarah Jane seems much more interesting and has people reacting in a vaguely normal manner to each other. I mean, there was none of the characters either snogging each other without lead up or getting hugely angsty! Good for you Liz!