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Sometimes it’s funny how many thoughts can pass through your head in a very short period of time.

Last Friday, I had a very busy day, but was feeling really ill so I came back to work from home for the afternoon. I was later than I expected to be, and hungry because I hadn’t had time for lunch. So I started making a sandwich, feeling a bit shaky and dizzy as I did so. I’d just finished the preparation and was about to fill my glass with some fruit juice when I felt it slip out of my hand.

We have a tiled kitchen floor, so almost anything breakable dropped on it tends to do just that. As the glass headed towards the floor I thought, “Oh no, not again” in a bowl of petunias falling towards a planet through space kind of way. To my astonishment, the glass actually bounced off the tiles without breaking. As it headed back up, I was thinking “Cool! It’s like that scene in Mon Oncle where Monsieur Hulot bounces the futuristic glass on the floor of the kitchen…”. That thought was swiftly followed by, “…Hey, but I’d better catch the glass right now, because it’s not going to bounce a second… OK. Too late”. The glass shattered into a million tiny, shards on the floor.

If only I spent less time thinking and more time doing, I might have one more glass in the cupboard today.

At the weekend, I finished the long-overdue re-design of my project site for Tracks¹. I used to use Textpattern to run the site, but while it was pretty powerful, I found doing some advanced things a little tricky. I spent a while looking around for other solutions, and eventually decided on ExpressionEngine Core. You have to pay for the Personal version, but the Core is free for non-profit use and has the all the features I need. If I ever find myself flush with cash (heh, I wish), I could always upgrade to the Personal version without any hassle.

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Some time ago, I got an email from Nick Booth of the Grassroots Channel which is part of the Birmingham Community Empowerment Network (which aims to do exactly what it says on the tin). Nick wondered if I’d be interested in the Grassroots Channel [podcast][3]. To tell the truth, I haven’t really made huge use of podcasts—-I tend to get behind on my RSS reading, so podcasts are yet another thing to keep up with. I subscribe to the Nature podcast and to the TextMate screencasts, but that’s about it.

Anyway, I was intrigued, and I’m interested in local issues, so I gave it a listen. I must say that I was pleasantly surprised. Grassroots really shows off the benefit of podcasting for community organisations, and some of their features are so well done that national broadcasters would be proud to have produced them. In particular, The Worst Slum in Europe is a fascinating conversation between community activist Natalie Brade, and Birmingham City Councillor, Sir Albert Bore. Natalie was part of a group of residents of a seriously run-down estate, Lee Bank, trying to get improvements in their appalling living conditions from the Council.

The conversation is wonderful because it’s mostly just between the two of them, rather than having an interviewer trying to polarise the debate. They tease one another (Bore describes the demonstrations of Natalie’s group as “bloody embarrassing” at one point, with a smile in his voice), but they listen to what the other has to say, and they clearly respect one another. It’s a pity that politics can’t be like that more often, and the results that Natalie’s group achieved is quite an inspiration.

Even if you don’t live in Birmingham, you might find it an interesting listen.

[3]: http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=82868503 “Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes”

Travelling on the same train each day to work means that I generally encounter more or less the same group of commuters. So when I got an earlier train one day, I was surprised and rather delighted by the travelling knitting circle I encountered. There was a group of six women who were already on the train when I boarded, and were occupying the six facing seats on one side of the carriage. Evidently ultra-fluffy or hairy wool is in right now, as each of them was knitting feather-boa-like scarves in bright colours like purple, red or sunny orange.

As they knitted, they chatted and laughed (itself a lamentably rare thing on a commuter train), barely looking at their work and letting their fingers follow a well-practiced routine. I noticed that their work tended to punctuate the conversation, so that changing needles would coincide with a pause in conversation, and they would speed up their stitches as they laughed at someone’s joke.

I felt slightly jealous of their easy camaraderie, and they reminded me of old photographs of groups of women cleaning fish, waulking cloth or doing other repetitive but social manual jobs that leave you free to talk. I’m one of those sad people who travels wearing listening to an iPod and with my nose in a book, but only because I can’t bear to be exposed to the 90% advertising drivel from the on-board TVs that get foisted on us by Central Trains. Now I’m half tempted to take up knitting again and shyly try to join the travelling knitting circle.

We have a furry house guest for about 7 weeks. My parents are going to Australia and New Zealand on holiday, so we’re looking after their cat, M, so that she doesn’t have to go into a cattery for the duration. M was a rescue cat and spent some time on the streets, but she’s also very fond of human company, and didn’t get on at all well when she had a short stay in a cattery once before. She’s not the kind of cat who is all over you, but she just likes to know that you’re around. My Dad works at home, and every day, she follows him up to the office in the morning, parks herself on the sofa, then follows him down to lunch like a little shadow.

The folks weren’t looking forward to the three-hour drive to our house in the car with her—-like most cats, she associates going in the cat basket in the car with men in white coats who do painful things and undignified things to you—-but she was actually very good once she’d settled down. It was funny watching her exploring the house, checking out every nook and cranny and marking every conceivable cat-head-height upright with her cheek scent glands.

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In Part One, I talked about the characters of Mal, Zoe and Wash. Here, I’ll discuss the remaining main characters.

Kaylee

Kaylee is Serenity’s mechanic, and a damn fine one, too. She has an almost personal relationship with the inner workings of the ship, and seems to have a completely intuitive understanding of what to do. In ‘Out of Gas’, we have a flashback to her first appearance on board, when she was enjoying a naturally zesty enterprise (one for the Big Lebowski fans) with the ship’s mechanic under the engine. Mal asked this young dude why he hadn’t got Serenity running yet, and as he was coming up with a lame excuse, he was immediately contradicted by Kaylee, who told him exactly what and where the problem was, resulting in a classic ‘But she’s a girl…’ moment from the guy. Mal immediately hired Kaylee and sacked the the former mechanic—-a very good decision in my opinion.

Kaylee is almost preternaturally cheerful, and thinks the best of people. All the time.

MAL: I don’t believe there is a power in the ‘verse that can stop Kaylee from being cheerful. [beat] Sometimes you just wanna duct tape her mouth and dump her in the hold for a month.

KAYLEE (grinning): I love my captain.

She’s a lover, not a fighter, and on the rare occasions when she gets a gun put in her hand, she looks at it as if it might bite her.

Jayne Cobb

By way of a complete contrast, Jayne (never try to tell him it’s a girl’s name) thinks the worst of everyone. All the time. He joined the crew by selling out some former partners in crime, and seems to be perpetually on the point of doing the same again. He has more muscles than brain cells, and can be unintentionally hilarious when he tries to make a smart remark. His continual verbal sniping is hilarious, and as a character, he’s a perfect foil for the more virtuous people on the crew.

Jayne loves guns, explosions and a good scrap more than almost anything else, and even has a gun called Vera, which is treats like a girlfriend. Actually, he probably treats Vera better than a girlfriend. Despite all this, deep down (very deep down) he’s actually hiding a nice guy with a conscience.

JAYNE (trying to learn ‘Doctor speak’ and failing): If I had wanted schooling, I’d’a gone to school.

Inara

Inara is a Companion—-a highly trained and well educated prostitute. Oddly, she’s more or less the most respectable person on the ship, and functions a bit like their ambassador. She secretly loves Mal, and yet he constantly winds her up with his brusqueness, insensitivity and downright rudeness. She takes both male and female clients, selecting them very carefully—-no riff-raff for her.

Inara is a bit of an enigma. She can be very witty, sensitive and caring (she has a very touching relationship with Kaylee, who she treats like a little sister), but because she’s generally so controlled it’s difficult to know what’s going on under the surface.

INARA: What did I say to you about barging into my shuttle?

MAL: That it was manly and impulsive?

INARA: Except that the exact word I used was “don’t”.

Shepherd Book

Book is a ‘Shepherd’ or Preacher, and initially came on board as a passenger. However, he quickly gets involved in the life of the ship and becomes part of the crew. He’s also a little bit of an enigma. While he’s outwardly fairly open, you get the feeling that there’s a lot in his past that he’s not talking about. He claimed to have been cloistered away in a monastery for several years, but he seems to know a lot about space ships, and is comfortably at home around guns:

ZOE: Preacher, don’t the Bible have some pretty specific things to say about killing?

BOOK: Quite specific. It is, however, somewhat fuzzier on the subject of kneecaps.

Is he really a preacher? Did he have anything to do with the Alliance in the past? He certainly got treated like royalty by the Alliance the minute they scanned his ID when he was badly injured and needed advanced medical treatment. There’s plenty of food for conspiracy theories where Shepherd Book is concerned.

He also has hilariously Big Hair when he unties it (so big that it terrified River into a screaming fit), and he tells filthy-sounding jokes that we annoyingly only get to hear the punchlines of.

Simon and River Tam

I feel as if it’s appropriate to consider Simon and River Tam together because the fate of these siblings is so bound up in one another. Simon (a talented doctor) rescued his sister River from a facility in which her brain was being experimented on, and they are now on the run from the Alliance. River was apparently an incredibly gifted child, and we still see—-through her madness—-flashes of her intelligence and prodigious talents. But she is extremely damaged and veers wildly and unpredictably between terror, rage, elation and silence.

In her lighter moments—-messing about with Kaylee—-she seems like an ordinary, happy kid, but these don’t last long before the demons return. All she has in the world is Simon, and he in turn loves her and protects her in the way that her father should have. They were from a rich, complacent family, and both are much better educated than the rest of the crew (with the possible exception of Inara). Simon sticks out like a sore thumb at first as the posh, rich kid, is prickly and doesn’t know how to fit in. But gradually, the edges are smoothed off him a bit, and his talents as a doctor are grudgingly admired.

RIVER (snipping passages out of Book’s bible): Noah’s ark is a problem. We’ll have to call it “early quantum state phenomenon.” Only way to fit five thousand species of mammal on the same boat.

I’ve always enjoyed Charlie Brooker’s Screen Burn columns in the Guardian, so I was interested to see that he’d got a TV show on BBC Four called ‘Screen Wipe’. It’s broadcast well past my bedtime, so we’ve been recording it and watching it at some later date while eating dinner. His Screen Burn column often made me spray coffee all over the table when a funny phrase caught me unawares, but now Screen Wipe results in the considerably more painful (and messy) snorting of pasta out through the nose.

Brooker is fabulously venomous about TV that he finds ridiculous, but also enthusiastic about programmes that he likes. There was a segment on the last programme about breakfast TV which was absolutely hilarious, including some clips from some dreadfully saccharine Australian TV programme for kids that appears to be his favoured early morning viewing.

He also did a bit on Noel Edmonds’ ‘Deal Or No Deal’—-a game show that I’m glad to say I’ve never seen. However, his description of it as the first game show based on quantum mechanics (more or less replicated in print here) was so funny that I’m tempted to watch it to see what he’s on about. Well, maybe not.

I mentioned that I got the Firefly DVD set for Christmas, and promised to talk more about it. I think it’s going to be fairly long, so this here’s the first part.

While I haven’t quite finished all of the episodes yet (I’m loving them so much that I’m trying to make them last as long as possible), I can safely say that I Firefly has equalled Farscape in my affections. They are very different kinds of shows, but both have excellent dialogue and plots, unusual scenarios and above all, characters that you deeply care about.

I got the feeling when I watched Serenity that knowing about the back-story of the characters would have considerably deepened the film, and I now know for sure that that’s true. The events of that film (and I really don’t want to provide any spoilers here) would be that much more emotionally involving having got to know the crew properly.

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(This is one for the Firefly fans—-I got the entire run on DVD for Christmas, and am enjoying the episodes enormously)

I was working at home the other day, and my lovely husband made some wonderful, thick, home-made minestrone soup for lunch. From scratch! With beans and macaroni and loads of vegetables and everything.

I walked into the kitchen and smelt the delicious smells rising from the saucepan, grinned like a cat who has got the cream and said:

Mmm… Husband soup.

This is all over the place at the moment, but this newly discovered hairy crustacean is so cute that I had to link to it. Even its name is adorable: Kiwa hirsuta. Appropriate too.

But am I the only one who thinks that it looks like a distant albino cousin of the Hug-in-a-Mug blue Hug Monster?

I’m finding it so hard to concentrate at the moment. The problem seems to seep into every part of my life, but it’s particularly acute at work. I did at least manage to finish preparing a talk for a conference this afternoon, but only by forcing myself to concentrate every five minutes by setting a timer to beep annoyingly at me. It’s partly because we’re caught up in the whole ‘Oh no, where are we going to live’ thing. We went to see a couple of houses last night, and I was awake until about 2am mentally arranging furniture, comparing commuting distances, generally weighing up pros and cons. It’s not even as if we’re mad keen on that particular house—-we just have way too many unknown variables at the moment. To make matters worse, the variables that we do know about (for example, how much money we have to spend) don’t allow us to solve the equation. Stupid maths.

There are few things more irritating than everyday objects that are badly designed. In our building at work, we have stainless steel sinks in the toilets, which are circular in outline, and more or less hemispherical in shape. They look lovely but are hugely irritating to use. You know what happens when you turn on the tap in your kitchen sink without realising that there’s a upturned teaspoon in the bottom of the sink? Well, imagine that effect but with a teaspoon the size of the entire sink. Water striking the sink with moderate force bounces straight off and conveniently soaks your groin area, rather than dampening your hands, which would have been much more useful.

The whole thing is made much worse by the taps, which are the ‘push to operate’ kind. It’s true that they save water because people can’t accidentally leave them running. However, these appear to have only a binary mode of operation, and are either off, or gush water at full force—-no intermediate flow rates seem to be possible. So you can only wash one hand at a time, while using the other to push the tap down, but somehow most other areas of your body get a thorough soaking.

I hate those sinks.

I added Tarnation to my film queue on Lovefilm quite some time ago, and if I remember rightly, I was interested in it for the very shallow reason that it was entirely made using iMovie. However, it turned out to be a somewhat unique film for other reasons, and well worth watching. I should point out that it’s not the kind of film to watch if you’re in the mood for a light, entertaining film. It’s probably one of the most harrowing, disturbing films I’ve seen recently.

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The Shipping Forecast is an odd thing. For many people (particularly Radio 4 addicts), lying in bed around 1 am listening to the gentle poetry of the Shipping Forecast is one of life’s secret but treasured pleasures. Curled up under the duvet, you can let the litany of “Dogger, Fisher, German Bight…”, “south-westerly five or six, rain then showers, moderate becoming good…” wash over you. You may live in Solihull, miles from the nearest coast, but for once you can be glad that you’re not in North Utsire enduring the gales.

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