A Work of Art

This is one of my favourite slideshows. It encompasses so many great memories of Bobby's finest scenes from Season One.

Thank you Vincent...

...for being so wonderful.
...for being instrumental in finding me such good friends.
...for just being you - the finest, sexiest actor in the known universe.

Vixens United (Kingdom)

Hours on end talking of very little but Vincent - a dream come true! And all in the best possible company.

Today, Diane, Ann, Eliza and I met up in central London. We meant to take lots of pictures (including with the BTSOH and a pair of his trousers/pants), but we spent so much time talking and then searching for dvds in case anything had slipped past us that we had to rush the pictures before Eliza had to leave to catch her coach home.

This one was taken by a newspaper vendor who was obviously not the best photographer in the world.


Luckily my brilliant photography skills (hmm) led to this picture of the lovely ladies without my ugly mug (and huge boobs) in there to spoil it!

By the end of the day we couldn't believe we hadn't known each other forever. Everyone had had a good sniff of the trousers and t-shirt, Diane had tried the trousers up against her to get an idea of the size of the man, and Ann had unzipped them in a very suggestive manner. Eliza played the LOCI theme tune that she has as the ringtone on her phone, and Vincent's laugh from the commentary of Steal That Movie, which is her message alert. Everyone else had pictures of Vincent on their phones. A new inspiration for me! Diane made us laugh with stories of her Vincent hunting trip to New York.

I have no idea how long we spent in the restaurant, more than two hours at a guess, but no-one disturbed us, and we were able to give free rein to our passion. We didn't laugh too loudly, suggestively or raucously. At least I don't think we did...

Whatever it is that Vincent D'Onofrio has, we were all agreed that we are so glad we discovered it. And we are delighted that it helped us find each other - and all of you!

Train Travel

When Diane did her Tag post, she mentioned the steam trains at the bottom of her grandmother's garden. It reminded me of a couple of events in my neighbourhood that happened 10 years apart.

In December 1957 a steam train that had missed warning lights in fog crashed into the back of a stationary electric train between St John's and Lewisham stations. The steam train crashed into a pier and collapsed the bridge on to another rail bridge below, where a third train was due any moment. Luckily the driver managed to stop the third train. In total 90 people died.



Ten years later, in November 1967, I was out with my boyfriend, my friend and her boyfriend, and her boyfriend's brother with his girlfriend, in a van. As we parked outside a Wimpy Bar to get some burgers, we realised that an non-stop stream of emergency vehicles was going past us. The van driver decided to follow them. After a while we got diverted away from where the problem was, but someone said they knew there was a railway line down there. We went home knowing we had been very close to something catastrophic. As a result I felt sort of "attached" to this disaster, as if I had actually been there.

A train had come off the rails only a mile or so from the previous crash, and 49 people died. One of the passengers who had a lucky escape was none other than Robin Gibb. (The van driver was called Wally Gunthorpe!)

Many years later, while dismantling a road bridge over the aforementioned St John's station, two workmen died when they made the mistake of removing two supporting keystones from the bridge and it collapsed, crushing them. It's not really a lucky corner of the woods, is it?

I still regularly drive under the bridge that was rebuilt after the first crash, and it always makes me sad.

Eosphoros - The Answer!

Many thanks to JoJo and Bobby's Girl for your research into this and suggestions for the relevance of the title to the episode. So it's the dawn light - dawning on April, perhaps - and the split between religious belief and atheism (atheism being a belief system of its own).

Who said Vincent D'Onofrio fans were obsessive?

Meanwhile we have a wander in the woods with Bobby and his feet...

...and some impressive violence from our boy towards some weights, really too fast to capture.

Boo Hoo - Goodbye Pirate Radio + 40 Years

It was forty years ago today
The Brit government destroyed our play,
So I'm here to introduce to you
The one and only great Big L - Wonderful Radio London!
(Apologies to the Beatles and Sergeant Pepper).

On this day in 1967 the Marine Broadcasting Offences Act came into force, and caused the demise of our pirate radio stations.

They were pirates of the Airwaves who were moored offshore on the sea waves broadcasting pop music to the nation. Until Radio Caroline, then Radio London, came on the scene, the only place to hear pop music was on Radio Luxembourg. I was totally addicted to Big L, and was distraught when it was shut down. The BBC had 3 radio stations (aside from the World Service). The Light Programme broadcast light music and entertainment, comedy and game shows - things like Music While You Work, Have A Go Joe, lots of leftovers from WW2-type broadcasting, nothing for the young once they'd outgrown Listen With Mother. The Home Service was the spoken language station, with plays and current afairs. Classical music with some Jazz was put out on The Third Programme (I kid you not, that was its name).

In the wake of the pirates, new BBC stations were spawned. The Light Programme was split into Radio 1 (pop music, using a lot of the old pirate DJs) and Radio 2 (light and middle-of-the-road music). The Third Programme became Radio 3, and The Home Service was Radio 4.

On Radio 4 this morning, they played Radio London's theme tune as a request from a listener to remember the end of Radio London. I had a few tears. Somewhere on an old flexible plastic 45rpm record, I have the last hour of Big L. I might have to dig it out and have a reminisce.

Rocketman Pocket Rocket

Got a most welcome eyeful I hadn't noticed before when I was doing a bit more capping from this great episode.

One-off credits

Just once, for episode 2 of season 4 (The Posthumous Collection) they used these two pictures in the opening credits. I like them. I don't know why they chose the Orson Welles hairdo pictures instead, given that his hair was like that in only one episode.

Sky Broadband

Anybody out there got it? I'm ditching Virginmedia (Richard Branson, your product is crap, your customer services would be a joke if it actually existed, and you have been overcharging me for many months).

I don't have Virgin broadband, I have Orange, 2mg, but apparently you can't have two, one as an alternative to the other in case one goes wrong. Orange has been good, but wireless will cost me £19.99 a month (I pay £14.99 for the plug-in variety). Sky wireless broadband will cost me £5 a month for 8mg. For cable TV, an extra phone line I don't want, and a separate broadband package, I pay a total £46.50. For Sky TV and broadband, with free weekend and evening phone calls on my main phone line, I will pay £23. Seems like a good deal, but IS SKY BROADBAND OK?

Please help me decide.

Mad Cap

I'm going to be offline for most of the day, so I just did a rush job of capping some more of Eosphoros (anyone know what that means? It's all Greek to me...)

Double Post

I went upstairs to take the bottom two pictures, but what I found first was that my wonderful parrot who behaves so well (!) that I'd left him out, was on the floor. Here's the result of his investigation into the news - lovely shredded newspaper decorating my newly vacuumed floor.

Yesterday I bought this necklace and bracelet at Bluewater shopping centre. Each link in the chain is a little leopard head, and bigger heads with outstretched paws make up the bracelet and pendant. They all have green glass eyes. They do earrings to match but there weren't any in stock, and I fear that they'd be clip-ons which give me headaches.

I defy anyone not to fall in love with them - and I hope my friend Susanna does, 'cos she has a gold version of the necklace coming at Christmas along with the matching earrings!