Channel Flicking Pays

I am the living proof. Idly flicking through channels on a Saturday night - hoping to find a really great film that had just started and continued to midnight so that I could get tetchy about not seeing it, and go to bed satisfied that I had spent the day well - I happened to notice some very familiar urban nightscapes. Oh my god, is that - could that be - It is! The opening sequence to the second Taggart* I wrote on ITV3. Yippy day, calloo callay.

Repeat fees! As they're being shown sequentially, that means the 1st one I did was probably shown too. Ha.

Aren't many jobs you can count a good day's work as slumping on the sofa casually pressing a TV remote button.

*Ken Russell's a fan, apparently. Which impresses me more than it probably should.

A bit of a gap...

Mmm, yes, sorry about that. So much for good intentions. Truth is I got bored with the sound of my own blog voice, which along with a flood of work and a hospital visit to repair a wrist injury*, meant that my blog-blathering came to an abrupt halt. This entry may or may not signal a remarkable return to form. My money's on the latter.

Worst thing about the wrist op - apart from projectile vomiting across my own bed in front of my fellow wardmates - was that I had to turn to voice recognition software to churn the words out. It's amazing how accurate it is, although apparently the robotic monotone I have now become accustomed to using does tend to grate on the listener. It's fine for e-mails and the like, and pretty good for notes too, but when it comes to the grimy, claustrophobic furnace at the wordface (Final pain in the arse bloody Draft), it gets very sticky indeed.

I don't know about you, but the act of creative writing seems to come as much through the mechanical act of writing as through the mind for me; something about the physical tappety tap of fingers on keys gives rhythm and drive.

Anyhow - spent a lovely day at the Lighthouse as guest writer on the TV writing course run by Philip Palmer - got good news about a crime series I co-created - got an Ashes to Ashes draft in with the help of the voice recognition software and packets of strepsils - was chuffed to find that my Life on Mars ep held its own with the football - went to the screening of the final LoM ep and secreted a tiny tear in the darkness of the auditorium (cracking ending...) and enjoyed flashing my post-op scar at every opportunity. Makes it look as though I fended off a razor attack, and means the Weegie** hardnut persona is an option should I ever have need to use it.


*I went into hospital, they put me under general anaesthetic, and then they broke my arm. Admittedly that was part of the mending plan, and they did have the decency to put it back together with a couple of bits of meccano and a few screws, but all the same... Ouch.