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Phew.

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Phew.

I meant to say on Friday night – they didn’t fuck Torchwood up.  I felt very much like someone had kicked a hole in my chest by the end of it.  In a good way.  I had my baby daughter clutched in my arms for most of it, thinking "You wouldn’t fucking dare touch her you alien paedogrant junkie fucks!".  Yes, it was a direct rip-off of Quatermass and there are plot-holes you could drive a JCB carrying a room-sized block of concrete through but sod it.  I bloody loved it, pretty much every second of it.  Go Torchwood, and I hope the writers have some idea where to go with season four, ’cause that’s a hell of a corner to write out of.  Also, pls to not be killing any more of the core cast, ok, thx.

Oh, and I was thinking this morning – anyone with editing software *needs* to put together a clip with the 5,6,7,8’s "Woo hoo" coming out of the speakers during the talks with Frobisher.  It would be funny!  Honest!  I can see it in my head.

In other news – who knew a draw could be exciting?  But there you go, first Test of the Ashes and it ended with our two worst batsmen clinging heroically to the stumps by their fingernails.  And they managed it!  Panesar even hit a boundary, the cocky bugger.  Well done for not losing, chaps, but England’s top batsmen need to have words with themselves.

Yeah, I’m talking about cricket.

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Sorry about this

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Sorry about this

Why does no-one respect the difference between cappuccino and latte these days?  Did they ever?  You ask for a cappuccino in pretty much any chain coffee shop and you’ll get a slightly fluffy latte.  Which is, you know, pointless. Why have the two items on the board?

Anyway, phwoo, eh, Torchwood?  Bit good, innit?  Actual event telly, for once.  I mean, the BBC3 series I loved despite its shitness.  It seemed very game and eager to please so I went with it (re-watching recently, though, I was struck by how much better it was than I remembered it).  Then the second, BBC2, series was properly good, no allowances needed (although the Big Bad was howlingly poor, the moving Owen/Tosh finale made up for it and washed the bad taste away).  But this!  This has stepped up to the challenge of clearing an hour of primetime BBC1 on five consecutive nights with confidence and style.  I am loving, loving, loving it.

Slight worry – RTD is shite at endings.  It could all go very very wrong tonight.

Fingers crossed.

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wanna be ending something

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wanna be ending something

It’s been a week since one of the most famous men on the planet dropped dead and have I blogged?  No.  I have other things to do, you know.

Not really.  I forgot.  Hello!  Do you want me to talk about my baby again?  Oh, i do that all the time.  What about other things in the world?  I mean… oh, but she’s so cute, though.  So cute.  She’s starting to learn how to smile.  Her face is looking more cheerful, which is just the loveliest thing.  The day she smiles at one of us because she’s happy to see us will be wonderful.

I got the first batch of photos from my SLR put on CD so I’ll upload those soon.  Yayness.  Some of them are just too good.  Some.. will not be on flickr.  Sorry, but I only want the best to go on public display*.  You don’t want half-arsed, do you?

In other news – Torchwood radio plays: surprisingly good.  Michael Jackson: still dead, am unable to maintain interest in story.  Weather: Unbearably muggy. 

*Like Michael Jackson’s corpse, or not, I forget where that story has gone.

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Clinical trials

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Clinical trials

Hello, still alive.

Here’s a phrase you never want to hear from your doctor "I do not like the look of this."  Excellent, doc.  Really?  What’s up with it?

About a week and a half ago, when my daughter was just over a week old, I noticed a rash under my arm.  Itchy, and a bit painful.  Like feeling tired, but more intense.  Being a complete idiot, I looked it up on NHS Direct.  The site said – shingles.  That freaked me out a bit – what if it’s shingles? What about the baby? Should I quarantine myself??  I made an appointment with my GP the next day.

I got there and saw a student doctor, who looked at it and, considering my history, was all ready to sign it off as a fungal infection.  Which is, you know, not nice but at least it’s not shingles.  He said shingles was way down on his list.  However, he wasn’t 100% certain what it was so he called the actual doctor in, who took a look at it, asked about my symptoms and said the words above.  Shingles, he pronounced.  Yup, NHS Direct was right.  Damn and blast.  Still, he said I was okay to be with baby and that was all I wanted to know.

We’re currently suffering from colic.  You might think that she, my daughter, is suffering alone, but that is to fundamentally misunderstand colic.  When a baby suffers, a baby does not suffer in silence.  When this policy of declarative discomfort is edging into your nights and fraying your days… well, at least *I* get to go to work.

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Fatherhood

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Hello. On the 31st of May, a little baby girl, red faced and screaming, was handed to me. She was my daughter. She was so red, her skin so soft, her head so neat and round, she looked like an angry radish. Within seconds, I had a nickname for her. Within a few more seconds, I realised that I loved her more intensely than anyone in the world bar her mother.

Surprise of the day – and this was a day full of surprises, was her hair. First of all – lots of it. Second of all – red. Neither of us have red hair. My beard is a bit auburn but still. An amazing, unexpected, glorious colour. Coupled with her gorgeous face – and I know I’m biased, but she does have a gorgeous face – she may be the most perfectly beautiful creature in the world.

Five days later, I’m utterly besotted and find it hard to imagine a world without her. Just now she was crying for something – nappy? food? cuddles – and I got her to calm down by just holding her. She looked up at me, her deep blue eyes finding my face and her expression broke my heart. The helplessness, the vulnerability, the knowledge contained in the face that I will be able to help… Impossible to disappoint her. How could I?

She sleeps now. And when she’s awake.. I’ll be here.

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More genius, less moping

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More genius, less moping

There’s a trailer for a documentary on, I dunno, maybe Discovery or something, about constructing a giant airship which was also an aircraft carrier.  Anyway, there’s a clip from the show with an old guy talking to camera.  He says, in all seriousness, "Einstein was the brains of the group".

Well, yes.  How fucking smart does a group have to be before Einstein is the muscle?

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Filmsy

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Filmsy

I have a film sitting at the chemist, waiting to be developed.  Very exciting.  I haven’t had a film developed since 1999, although I did own a Polaroid and that did sort of develop film.  On its own.  LIKE MAGIC.

This, and I think I’ve mentioned this before, comes from my SLR.  It’s a roll of experimental photographs, where I’ve played with aperture width and shutter speed and that sort of thing.  I don’t know if it’ll help or not, but there should be, somewhere, some really fucking cool photos in there.

Maybe.

Or maybe every single one will be a useless blur.  Who knows?  It’s possible.  This is the uncertain joy of photography.  Digital cameras have taken it from us.  Pictures are, as a wise advertising slogan once declared, back.

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Not following up

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But I just saw a graph of reported measles cases in the last 10 years. Scary. However, I also saw a chart of meningitis cases since the various vaccines were introduced. Just brilliant. Check this out –

Since the Hib (Haemophilus influenzae type b) vaccine was introduced in 1992, cases of this disease, which can cause meningitis, have dropped by 99 per cent from about 800 cases a year to a record low of 12 cases last year in children under five. Since the Meningitis C vaccine was introduced in 1999, deaths from the disease have fallen from as many as 79 to an average of less than one death a year. In the two years since the pneumococcal vaccine was introduced, it is estimated that over 900 serious cases have been prevented.

We're winning that one, and there's (hopefully) more good news to come with another vaccine.

Sorry, this is all a bit serious. Stuff about coffee cups next week, promise!

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EmEmArr

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EmEmArr

Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the doctor’s… http://rly.cc/UbRmM

I just can’t quite articulate fully why this annoys – enrages me – so.  For a start – we’ve been through this.  There is nothing, nothing, to link the MMR jab with autism.  Just fuck-all.  As a nation, we’re settling back down in our chairs and surveying the mess we’re in thanks to the wilful scaremongering of, specifically in this case, the Daily Mail[1].  Herd immunity is on the line, thanks to hysteria, uncertainty and misinformation.  Sure, it must have been hard for parents at the time, blah blah but fuck it.  A little bit of reading on the actual *facts* might have given you pause for thought – Wakefield’s findings were based on a minute sample and drew conclusions which were, frankly, mental.  These autistic children were given the MMR vaccine, and then they were diagnosed with autism?  What?  People with cancer, AIDS and male pattern baldness were also given the MMR vaccine… was it responsible the for those, too?  Do you see how easy it is to jump one way or the other on this?  Ugh.  Anyway, disregarding my unscientific analysis of the situation, the evidence is overwhelmingly against MMR being responsible for autism.  It just isn’t.

And so when someone like Oprah can allow someone like Jenny McCarthy airtime to spread the same hysteria, uncertainty and misinformation which is actually – and here I’m going to go all Daily Mail on your asses, like it or not – KILLING BABIES, well, shit.  It gives me the rage.  Freedom of speech is all very well, but as a wise man once said, with great power comes great responsibility.

I hope America does its research, and doesn’t let this one in.  But you know it won’t, just like we didn’t..

[1]Not just the Mail, of course, but hooboy, they’re the biggest, worstest culprit in this one.