Two weeks ago I was sitting in blissful ignorance, surrounded by a lifetime’s accumulated crap. I shuffled the stacks of paper to opposite sides of the coffee table making room for my feet and, as an exercise in pointlessness, I picked up the phone, dialled the estate agent. For the third time that week. “Why haven’t you called me back?” I asked. “What’s going on?” Mr Bluebird flew off my shoulder and into the microwave where he exploded in a puff of feathers.

The estate agent apologised and pledged her renewed allegiance to the flat. Two minutes later, she called me back. “I just spoke to the vendor’s solicitors and they’re all ready to exchange contracts on Friday. So you need to talk to your solicitor.” So I called him. “So, are we all ready to exchange contracts on Friday?” I ask. “First I’ve heard about it. The vendor’s solicitors haven’t spoken to me in months.” Again I call the estate agent who doesn’t return my call. Ever.

This is taking far too long so I phone Mrs Garrett, the vendor’s mother. Between us we bypass everyone and sort everything out. I sign the contract and the solicitors do the exchange on the Friday. Things start happening. And then they start happening really fast.

Within no time at all I’ve met with an immigration lawyer. He tells me what I need to know and recommends a tax lawyer. Then next day, by coincidence, I’ve got the visa papers from the USA. I return them immediately. Suddenly they reply. I have an appointment to get the fiance visa. Hoorah! I’ll be with my Laura! And in only a few more weeks. Almost before I know it, I’m in the loft, I’m emptying cupboards. I’m packing. Wow. I didn’t know I owned so many comic books. They seem to be in every carton and suitcase. Somehow I find time to sell Mrs Garrett all my furniture, the fridge and a kettle.

And then, yesterday, I met with a tax attorney. Yes, a real live tax attorney all the way from LA. She wears a white T-shirt with a dark suit jacket and, as well as the tax thing, she does production law for TV and film. She also collects snow globes. There are millions of them, okay dozens, shelves full, all around her office. “Michigan is very cold,” she tells me, which seems strangely ironic for a Los Angelino who surrounds herself with fake snow. Nevertheless, she’s friendly and helpful and I instantly like her. She tells me about getting a social security number and capital gains tax (which I won’t have to pay, hurrah!).

In the middle of all the above, somehow I finally get The Car mixed and graded. Yes, I know I said it was finished on the screening invites. I lied. Sue me. Hey, I have a lawyer, so ner ner. Anyway, both the grading and mixing are surprisingly easy (like this lapsing into the present tense thing) so I don’t bother writing about them. Gary the grader makes all my shots match and Mike the mixer makes all the sound balance, Bob’s your uncle, Fanny’s your aunt, job done. All ready for the big move and the big movie.

Serendipity. Everything coming together at once. It felt serendipitous to get the moving date sorted on the house just as the visa was coming together. And it felt serendipitous too to find a tax lawyer who also handles film production law at just the right time for moving to the US. And look at that. Looky looky! I am, as I say, lawyered-up. It’s almost like being a citizen, except for that thing of not having a vote while still paying taxes. It’s as real as Coca Cola. It’s real. It’s actual. Everything is satisfactual.

Gary’s overflow is leaking. It’s been leaking for six or seven weeks now. A constant trickle of stale smelling water dribbling out beside his drive. He stopped me last week–actually, I couldn’t avoid him because his mate had expertly parked a Range Rover partway across my drive. Obviously doesn’t want to get those delicate 4×4 front tyres wet in the overflow spill.

“Hey, Keith! I’ve been meaning to have a word with you about this leaking water.” Oh, yes? “Yes, I thought it was me. But have a look…” He showed me the pipe. It goes back though his shed, into the adjoining wall to my shed… My shed. Ah. It’s my pipe. My overflow is leaking. It’s been leaking for six or seven weeks now…

Drat.

Still, shouldn’t be too hard to fix, should it. It goes up into the loft where, presumably, there’s a water tank and a broken ball valve/stopcock. All I have to do is find the tank and replace the valve. While I’m at it, it might also be a good idea to get all the crap down from the loft. Especially since I’m moving out in two weeks.

Today was the day. Balancing on the wobbly kitchen chair, I climb up on the back. I brace against the wooden beams, rubber soled training shoes walk Spider-Man-esque up the cupboard door and I’m there. In the loft. Maybe I should use a ladder but where would the fun be in that? No, thrill-seekers, if you want a frisson of excitement in your Sunday, then climbing up to dangerous spaces on the backs of chairs is the way to go.

Risk reminds me I’m alive. Thirty minutes later, I’ve manouevred half the loft contents down to the floor below. Mostly empty boxes. Where did all this crap come from? Why did I keep it? Note to self: don’t keep any more crap. While risk reminds me of life in the present, crap reminds me of life in the past. Emotional baggage. Real baggage. It’s a pain to sort out.

Last week I was sorting through a huge stack of comic books trying to decide which ones to keep and which to give away. I took out about 15 and a complete series called The Kents. I felt vaguely uneasy about offloading any of them. Now I realise I was merely tinkering at the edges of a much larger problem. Half the contents of my loft fill nearly all the floorspace of my flat.

Eventually I make my way to the far end of my roof space, the place where the pipe should exit down into my shed. It’s a section that drops down, over the stairwell. I shine the torch down into the void to find the water tank. Except–there is no water tank. There’s nothing. Just rockwool insulation everywhere and a thin layer of plasterboard sloping down over the stairs to an empty space above the front door.

Where is the tank? Where is the pipe? Is it under the rockwool? I’m not putting my hand in to find out. It’s nasty stuff, that glass fibre. Once it’s in your skin, it never comes out. Ever. At least that’s what my dad told me a long time ago, when I was a kid.

I suspect it was to discourage me from going up into the loft. Now I’m discouraged by the dark void where the pipe might be and the fragile looking plasterboard which I know is all that would be stopping me plummeting down to my own staircase. Why would someone hide pipes like this? It makes no sense at all.

I shrug, give up and go back down into the living room where I regard all the boxes. It’s going to fun crushing all those unwanted videotapes over at the dump. It will be a joy to free myself of the baggage of old kettle cartons, crating for light fittings and flattened blueprints of Gotham City stolen from the bins at Shepperton Studios when they filmed Batman. It’s not going to be so much fun paying out for a plumber to sort out the leak.

It will have to wait. I find an original series Star Trek communicator still boxed among all the other crap. Enterprise. One to beam up. I’m moving. I’m gone. Meanwhile the constant stream of stale smelling water dribbles relentlessly beside Gary’s front door.

Hey, the US of A has approved our fiance visa petition! Which is effectively the same as saying that the world’s most powerful country has blessed our marriage. How cool is that? I get to be with my love! That’s the coolest.

Today I am mostly exhibiting the jaw-aching perma-grin.

Transatlantic travel–it’s a gamble. Like how many babies will be on the red-eye? Will I sit next to a passenger whose concept of self extends beyond their seat and into mine? Can I get an exit row seat? Can I? Can I? Que sera sera. Whatever will be will be. Will it be chicken? Cooked to death veg? We’ll have to wait and see.

Getting an exit row seat means enough room to fit in my legs. To stretch out even. Getting an exit row seat is all-important if you’re over six foot (and I am) so I’m at the airport at least three hours before departure, if not sooner. There are three people in the line before me and two check-in clerks. Naturally, being a British airline, it takes them no less than twenty minutes to process them all. It feels like twenty minutes. Eventually I shuffle forwards with my suitcase and guitar in hand (don’t!).

“And is there any chance of an exit row seat?” I inquire. “Let me just check.” Check-in–more than just a clever name after all. She checks. She prints out another boarding pass. She hands it to me. “You’ve been upgraded to business class.” Outside I am a model citizen, a picture of calm. Inside: Snoopy dance. I grin. “Awesome! Thanks! Can I use the lounge?” We love the lounge. The lounge has free beers and peanuts. She shakes her head. It was pushing it. I wander off through Heathrow, smiling graciously at my subjects. Today I am a Patrician, business class in my jeans and tatty old travelling shirt.

Scheduled flying is a lot like getting a hand in poker. If you’re ticketed for baggage class, then sitting in the exit row beats getting wedged into a standard seat. It’s like having three of a kind playing against a pair. However, if you manage to get a row of empty seats all to yourself, then that’s better than either. A full house. You can push all the armrests up–not possible in the exit row–and sleep.

No babies crying is better than babies, naturally, so that’s a pair, although you can sleep through that. It’s possible and sometimes inevitable. One extra seat to dump crap and stack food trays is a pair of kings. Getting an exit row seat at the front of the cabin on a Virgin Atlantic 747 when they’re transporting members of the armed forces beats a straight exit row because you get spin-offs like endless free beers–“Shhh! On the house!”–and huge quantities of pistachios moved down from the cabin above. That’s a royal flush.

Nothing beats getting the whole row full-house, however. Except an upgrade. An upgrade is four of a kind, every time. First class is the ultimate goal, but business still beats economy. Thanks to British Airways striking staff, they’re having to shift more passengers than they have economy seats, so although many hundreds were losers earlier in the month, a good number of us are winners this week. Especially me. And I paid for half my flight with air miles.

Don’t you just hate a smug bastard? Well, BA has parked the plane at the far end of the terminal, a good ten minute walk down interminable corridors to a metal bunker without air conditioning. They keep us waiting for half an hour in the best traditions of UK service industries. No explanation. No announcement. No apology. Given a choice, I’d fly an American airline every time. British companies are just plain rude. Still, we’re talking priority boarding here and I smile benevolently at my fellow travellers, the hapless line of plebs starting their holidays in sweaty discomfort.

“Bastard,” their eyes say as I skip lightly down the entryway. Like I’ll be hearing their tightly-packed groaning back there in the hold. I put my plush leatherette seat into ‘bed’ mode and stretch out… except… No! You won’t believe this but BA’s business class seats create a bed that’s less than six feet long! Good grief. It’s not like that time I used frequent flyer points to travel Business First with Continental. Whatever. I still don’t care. These seats are wide enough to curl up on. I tank up on free g&t and do a little video editing on the laptop. Then a few glasses of wine–“Chardonnay? Or chardonnay?” (it’s BA; they’ve pulled out all the stop, singular)–and I’m zonked out.

Thunder storms over Toronto, plane diverted, two hours sitting on the ground in Ottawa, eventually I arrive and call the hotel to tell my love I’m there and late. The hotel don’t tell me she’s driven out to meet me. Ho, no. Far too easy. They wait until I’m actually at the hotel, twenty dollars distance. On the phone they say things like, “Nora? Nora Fresher? How do you spill this pliz?” It’s Laura, I tell them and leave a message.

I collect my guitar, suitcase, jump in a taxi and am at the hotel in no time flat. “Oh,” says the desk clerk. “Oh, Miss Fisher has gone to the airport to meet you.” He stares at me hopefully, like I’ll have an answer to their incomprehensible behaviour. I stare back at him, an expression which says, “Now? Now you tell me? Thank you. Thank you so bloody much.” He repeats, “She has gone to the airport,” clearly unable to comprehend my presence. “Yes. Well, I can’t do much about that now can I?” He gives in and gives me the key.

Well, I can’t leave my love standing there but I can’t play tag in taxis either. We business class patrician types aren’t all made out of money. It takes four phone calls to find someone who is not just a real human being but who can actually do the paging thing for Laura at terminal three. I trust the Hilton staff all get baggage class seats at the back of the cabin from now on. Let them try making out the film soundtrack over the engine noise as I recline my seat from the front in their general direction and, through a domino effect, squash them. Flat. And I block their toilet for good measure. There. We can never go back.

At last–an endless journey later–I have my girl in my arms, for a few days. And then it is an endless now. And airline poker is reduced to its true status. A sideshow. Freakish and gaudy. Love. Love is all. And love is now.

Gary and Terry downstairs have bought the blue Suzuki jeep from the girl down the block. That’s the same car which the mad woman smashed up by driving it into someone’s front porch over the road here. That’s the same car which they then tried to dump over in a dodgy estate (aka ‘Beirut’ to those living nearby) while they appeared to be scamming an insurance claim. That’s the same car I had a mystery phone call about a few weeks back, apparently from a finance company which wanted to know if I’d seen the car because it hasn’t been paid for.

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. I think maybe I’ll cut the tree down after all. What the hell.

Gary has been busy digging bricks out of his drive this week and putting them on the patch of dirt I like to call my garden. I moved said bricks on to the pile of builders’ rubble at the end of the street where they’re building a new cyclepath. I think Gary was eyeing up the stack of kerb stones to build himself a nice new flower garden, although to be fair, he did actually weed his garden the other day and plant some new shrubs, which is more than I’ve ever done.

Witchypoo has stopped asking me to cut down my conifer so that she can spy on the neighbours opposite. She seems to have stopped speaking to me altogether, which is just fine. I’m sure she’ll give the new owner plenty of earbashing. How delighted she’ll be to have someone new to gossip about! Big Mad Beulla will also be around for a spot of proselytising, to try coaxing him along to The Salvation Army for a slice of cake and a sing-song.

Did I write about the weird phone call I had the other day? Apparently the nice shiny blue jeep which the girl two doors down backed into another neighbour’s porch last year isn’t paid for. The finance company would very much like to know what happened to it and wondered if I might have seen it from my window. Alas, I hadn’t. Same caller also mentioned that one neighbour had been out on the street threatening another with a samurai sword. Nice.

It appears that the police visit this tranquil looking close far more often than I’ve ever realised. Actually, they did a drive-by the other morning at 5.30am, no doubt looking for the blue jeep. I was about to go to work when a patrol car slunk quietly down to the end of the road, turned round in slow motion and slunk out again. Fortunately I’d already dumped Gary’s bricks over the hedge just thirty seconds before. I don’t think they saw the guilty look on my face.

No, I won’t miss them. Well, maybe the bricks. But not the neighbours.

Today I sold my property.

It’s been a great place to live. Good friends, good times. Remortgaging has paid for film making, world travel and lots of computer equipment.

Definitely worth it.

Bye bye, house.

Hello, new life.

You really want to hear about my faxing weekend? The one where I finally got a few days off faxing work to stop sending faxes on my nonexistent fax machine and chill out at home? Of course you do. Even if my weekends don’t happen on the weekend, it’s all a circus to you anyway, isn’t it? Fax show freak show, right here, right now. Get your tickets at the door. My front door.

I’m woken up at about thirty after noon on Friday, because my weekend started on Wednesday and what do you care anyway? They’re just days. Arbitrary. I’m woken up by some woman who is screaming, yeah, that’s right screaming, herself hoarse outside my window. Why? “We’re moving Zoe out,” I hear a man’s voice explaining. Zoe is my neighbour of, what? A year? Yes, around twelve months, tops. Screaming woman lets us all know how she feels about Zoe moving out. She wants to KILL HER. She want to chop her up into little pieces. Because, in true soap opera style, Zoe has slept with her husband.

Zoe’s brother is there, moving her out, and Zoe is nowhere to be seen. She’s hiding from the frothing harpie. Smart move. “I’ve told you where she is,” brother Grimm says. He shouts it quite loudly, in fact, because screaming woman seems to have some difficulty with volume. But Grimm doesn’t let himself get angry. “Yeah?” screams the woman. “YEAH? Well YOU should be defending her, shouldn’t you? You’re her BROTHER!” She jabs her finger dangerously close to the brother’s eye. He is one of six huge men, built like brick outhouses, moving all of Zoe’s belongings into a grey van which is blocking not just my driveway but five others as well.

That’s nice. Never mind if someone wants to do something other than watch the freaks in the street from their window, taking the car out is not an option. Thanks to a world where everything is provided and every whim is catered for all the “poor little me” people–the public, who have so many rights without responsibility that it’s a joke–thanks to this world, people’s selfishness, their whiney me-first you-never selfishness is on the increase. Especially when it comes to parking. If you can block several other people when you stop your vehicle, then who gives a flying one, eh?

Screaming woman could certainly care less. You’d have paid handsomely for a ticket to this circus today. “She’s nothing but a dirty slag,” she screams at the brother. “She slept with my husband and what are you going to do about it?” Logic clearly isn’t her strong suit but it doesn’t stop her flow. “You tell that ****ing ***re I’m gonna ****ing slice her up until little pieces, the c***! You tell her that!” Her twisted mouth is about two inches from the brother’s nose. Half the street has turned out to watch. Yeah, you’d have been there.

I have a grandstand view from both my kitchen and bathroom windows. Brother’s buddies continue loading the van. Seems no one has to work on a Friday round our way. Funny that. No one needs to work. Got plenty; don’t need to strive for more. Or, indeed, strive for anything. They’ve all got a roof over their heads, food on the table, electricity, water and television. Let’s not forget television, where they all learned to scream and swear and threaten death to each other in the street.

World going into recession? Manufacturing industry gone? Service industries moving to Calcutta? Who cares, as long as you’ve got enough drugs and the latest Playstation games, who cares? No one here. Why should they? They don’t need a job in one of the richest countries in the world. Muggins will provide. Muggins who pays the taxes. Riots at the international trade conventions. Riots protesting the sickening disparity in earnings between the haves and have-nots. Riots by people who have the time to riot. It’s hypocrisy, it’s paradox and it’s going to get worse.

Next time I look out, screaming woman has moved her circus down the street. Her sixteen year old niece sneers at Zoe’s now empty house as she walks past with her dog. As she does so, she mentions Zoe stole her 34 year old married boyfriend a while back. “Did she tell you?” says the girl, with dark rings around her eyes. “I was shagging him,” she tells my retired neighbour down the block, “He was mine but she shagged him anyway.” She swears and shrugs her slouched shoulders. “The new guy will be quieter,” child woman lets us know. “He’s a drug dealer. He’ll be quieter.”

Another neighbour remarks that Zoe had different men climbing in and out of the window at all hours of the day. Who cares? Although why they didn’t just use the front door has got to be a mystery, it’s not one I’m remotely interested in solving. The biggest mystery to me is how I’m going to sell my property when the neighbours behave like zoo animals. Guess I’ll be dropping the price by another five thousand at the end of this month.

While they ramble on at each other, I go back to watching Heaven, an impossible, tragic, beautiful moral dilemma with captivating Cate Blanchett on DVD. The camerawork is mesmerising as it lingers on people’s perfectly lit faces and the perfectly lit world they inhabit. I let the sounds and images carry me away from the world outside. For an hour. Two.

Meanwhile, fights break out between the sideshow onloookers who have now gathered into smaller groups. “You!” “No, you!” The noise moves away from my windows. The van moves away from my drive and then, like a fading whisper of a storm, it’s quiet again. Gary downstairs is outside in the sunshine, cleaning his motorbike for the millionth time this week. “You ‘ave to,” he says. “As soon as you take it aat, it just gets plastered. I got it up to a hundred and two this afternoon.” It’s wrong but in a way you can appreciate. Gary grins and I don’t see any flies stuck to his teeth, so it must be cool.

It’s five to seven now. I drive round to the post office sorting office which has a late collection and I drop off some videos for a guy composing music for my latest short. Then over to the bottle bank where everything is full to overflowing except green so they all go in green. Brownish green, clearish green. I’m not making a second trip. Cuff it. On to an editor buddy’s house to drop off some video for an actress friend’s showreel. He gives me a copy of Gollum’s MTV award speech which is the funniest thing I’ve seen for weeks. While I’m out, the police apparently arrested the screaming woman.

Reflecting, I can’t believe Zoe’s brother’s restraint in dealing with so much anger and abuse directed unjustly at him, as if he controls his sister. Amazing. I contemplate dropping another five thou off the price of my flat. The sooner I sell this place the better. I go back to watching the other DVD I’ve rented, Irreversible, and a man smashes another man’s face into a jellied pulp of bone and brains within ten minutes of this badly photographed neanderthal amorality. It turns my stomach so I switch it off and come here to write.

It’s the longest day of the year and the years are getting shorter. But it’s the weekends which do so many of us in.

I, I will be king

I joined the Directors Guild a while back, hoping to network, share some experiences, maybe find out things–things like how do you get an agent. Ah, yes. Despite the short films, I still have no agent. Maybe it’s because I’ve spent too much energy producing and not enough creativity directing. I don’t feel like I’m at my peak. Clearly, the prospective agents don’t either. We must push harder. That’s the royal ‘we’.

Anyway, I was also hoping to be part of a network sharing the same problems and learning some answers. Like “Is the DP always a sod who won’t do what you tell him?” and “How do you motivate your editor to finish your project without paying them?” Heh.

And you, you be queen

This evening I went along to what will be my fourth Directors Guild activity. Informal dinner at an Italian restaurant in the West End. I dressed in my usual informal black jeans, black T-shirt summer/winter collection combo. There were two others there when I arrived. They weren’t wearing the backstage luvvie combo, but there’s no doubt in my mind that they were luvvies. Oh, no. No doubt at all. The numbers swelled to, ooh, seven at the evening’s peak.

For nothing can drive them away

We started talking about the DV technology demonstrated at the meeting last week. Final Cut Pro. Shake. Avid. Hey, I have the first of these. I’m ahead. But it’s only a tool. Anyway, I didn’t quite feel like part of the ‘we’. More like an independent, eavesdropping. Chris, one of the first two there, talked a lot and with confidence which made me feel like I’m not achieving. He’s one of those people I want to compete against. He’s highly successful. Directs EastEnders, writes for The Bill. Hmmm.

Hmmm. Okay, so he’s working on soaps. But it’s a real job, directing and writing drama. I kept thinking he looked familiar. By the end of the evening, I’d figured it out… He was in Lovejoy (Eric Catchpole for those who’ve ever seen it). Ha! Sussed. I felt less competitive, although not a huge amount because Lovejoy was one of the best dramas on UK television when it was going. Except he was Eric. Haha! Okay, well, Eric was a good character. Oh, I don’t know.

We can beat them, just for one day

The conversation turned to stories of actors and celebrities misbehaving. Keith Moon challenging Oliver Reed to a drinking contest while one of the other directors was still an AD on features and had to sort out the chaos. The same Keith Moon decorating an actor’s room with takeout curries in a hotel and the crew leaving their lodgings at 3am somewhere else because the production hadn’t got the money to pay for accommodation. Various actors shagging various other actors and famous people who shall remain nameless. All very amusing. I just kept quiet and listened.

We can be heroes, just for one day

Afterwards, I felt a bit like I’d sat in on some kind of Richard measuring contest. (Think about it.) We hadn’t really talked about directing or film making so much as anecdotes about debauched episodes. Is this really why I joined the Directors Guild? I don’t know. Perhaps it’s just an introduction to networking, but where’s the passion for moving pictures? We did have a good chat about films for part of the evening, but it was more “Wasn’t that good?” rather than any analysis. We also talked a while about how most us spend more time online than watching television…

I don’t know. These guys are okay. I just would have really loved to have got some insights from them into the actual process of directing and how they analyse a scene or whatever. There was discussion about executive producers and managers all have word processors and therefore consider themselves writers. Which means they all edit the script. Which I think is crap and so does everyone else. But it doesn’t help. Nor does the discovery of the ‘magic toothbrush’–two for �1–which you chew to clean your teeth after a meal.

I have a feeling next week’s meeting at the New Producers’ Alliance will be more productive. Until then, I only have 50 pages left to study in the Final Cut Pro training manual until I’ve completed it and I should be meeting up with Peter, the sound editor/re-recording mixer next week to look at The Car. More water falls on the impenetrable rock…

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Actually, I think I know what’s hacking me off. It’s the idea that the highest thing I can aspire to at the BBC is directing TV soaps. And that’s so incredibly hard to get into, I might as well forget it. They manage to include the word drama in the department and somehow it becomes some kind of holy grail.

Well, to my mind, TV is the ultimate throw away medium. I have no desire to direct soaps, or most other kinds of television. It’s crap. It’s getting worse with hundreds of channels and very little content. Why do I want to do that? What’s it achieving? Unless it’s high quality and reaches, truly reaches, an audience–rather than diverting them from their lives for half an hour–what is the point?

It’s gotta be meaningful, or what’s the point? Except as a stepping stone. This is all arrogant bs of course. Do I really think I can change the world? I don’t even know how I’d want to change it. I just want to be heard over all the noise. And there sure is a lot of noise. But mostly I’m not even sure I have anything to say.

Ha!

Maybe it’s the quality of the audience is what matters. Like you, dear readers. Yes. Hmmmm. Interesting thought. Must think more on this…

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Other things I’ve been to at the Director’s Guild were Herbie Wise’s directing masterclass, which was a wonderful opportunity and gave me tons of confidence, and the AGM, which was okay but not much of a networking opportunity for me in particular. This week’s networking activity will be my first with the New Producers’ Alliance (NPA).

From what I hear, the NPA ranges from pretty poor to very good. Their workshop tomorrow night covers the responsibilities of the assistant director and various other film pre-production goodies. The important thing, as far as I’m concerned however, is that talking to producers is far more useful to me as a director than talking to other directors.

And at the end of the day, I’d rather be talking about the creative possibilities than the personalities involved.

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Actually, not everything on TV is crap. A programme I’m really into at the moment is Witchblade on the Sci-Fi channel. Lots of imaginative camerawork and some nice effects have gone into transforming Sara Pezzini from Top Cow’s comic books to the screen. Okay, so the witchblade doesn’t rip all her clothes off when it manifests like it does in the books (shame) but the acting is solid, the stories don’t try to resolve every episode and the overall story has a strong magical realism quality, which is something that really appeals to me and I tried getting into with Fate & Fortune.

If I could direct episodes (or even the whole series) of something like that, I’d be happy.

And made £75. Not bad on an investment (okay, speculative punt) of £300, methinks. In fact, it’s 24% in six months. Powderject (PJP.L). Every year they make flu vaccine and every winter their shares seem to go up. I won’t say I can predict this accurately, but so far it’s worked every time.

Now I’ve put some of the proceeds plus some savings into some stocks on the NYSE. My first investment in the US markets. American Express Sharepeople, my current brokers, charged me just over £40 commission for buying £300-worth of US shares. I thought they were only charging me £15 (still high but cheap for Britain) but £15 is only for UK shares.

Is this worth it? Rhetorical question, of course.

I want to buy into the UK cable industry but Telewest (TWT.L) have more debt than a third world country and the biggest company, NTL, is–bizarrely–only listed on the Nasdaq.

Why list a UK company only in the USA? It’s just wrong, isn’t it? It stinks of fish. I can only think it’s because they are great (somethings)* who don’t want the UK authorities looking over their shoulders. However, that doesn’t mean they won’t make money. Homeworking is the future here and high speed cable is the key to that, among other things.

I really don’t want to be paying such an extortionate commission charge for the privilege of buying into it, though.

Gonna buy me some new spectacles with the rest of my “profits”.**

*this word has been ommitted on legal advice.
**gambling win, let’s face it.