week off

I've got a week off! Yay! Annual leave. Only I have a sneaking suspicion that I should go to work this week due to potential opportunities. Who knows. Gonna keep half of my brain on work, even though. Actually I've been working this morning, mainly due to not being quite with it last week. All done now though.

Gout update: foot not as swollen but still painful. Bad news though: now have gout in my knee too. I've had it in my knee before. Want to know how unhappy I am about that? Kind of fucks up some of my plans for my week off. Or maybe it shouldn't. Thoughts please from those more used to pain, joint swelling yet still intelligently looking after yourself while going out and about. I've watched so much of what I've stored up on my Sky+ hard disk this weekend (approx 12 hours of TV) that I'm going a bit numb.

Sky+ though, while I'm on it, wow! It totally changes how you think of TV. How often do you go to bed at night thinking to yourself: "11 o'clock documentary or snooze" and the snooze wins? Just click a button and the doc is there for you and you don't need to be tied down by schedules, can even 'series link it'.

Dunno about you but at 10pm I'm not always up for an hour long documentary ... it's a big commitment at that hour ... and you shrug it off and find yourself just watching pulp tv most of the time. Get sky+ and you can start avoiding the wallpaper pulp and start really getting into some decent quality tv. It has turned TV into more of an intelligent medium, for me, watching late night docs at 6pm for instance. All hoovered up off the TV ether. Fabulous.

thanks to Sky+ I've seen almost all of BBC4's excellent Lost Decade season. I urge you to do same.

What's this new deal with Sky? If you have Sky and recommend a friend, you get upgraded to Sky+ free? Woah! Get looking for friends who you can convert into a lover of the evil Murdoch regime.

Back to Lost decade though, watched the documentary about British sci fi author John Wyndham on saturday night (actually it was 8am sunday morning, thanks Sky+) and loved it. Bit disappointed that they left out Chocky. I remember the Chocky TV series very well! Actually it was one of the very last things I saw on tv before losing my sight at 13. My mate Warren got it for me on DVD for my birthday last year and weirdly the theme tune made me cry. Made me realise that there are probably several years of therapy bursting to come out of me and hit my credit card.

Chocky good though, great story. The George Orwell documentary also on Saturday night on BBC4 was OK. I learnt quite a bit about Orwell and what inspired him. I had no idea he had fought in the Spanish civil war or spent time as a policeman in Burma. He was obsessed with totalitarianism throughout his life. Really interesting. And of course, famously, Room 101 from 1984 was the number of the room he worked in at BBC Broadcasting House. I always knew this was the case, a bit of work mythology, but I never attempted to find it when I was working in BH a few years ago. I will next time I'm there. Seem to remember that the director General's office was in that vacinity. Actually that can't be the case I thought he was on the top floor. But that's irrelevant because he's based elsewhere now anyway, what with BH being half pulled down and being rebuilt n'all. really interesting architectural project, he said as someone who barely even knows what modern buildings look like now. Gerkins?