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Dec. 28th, 2010 05:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
phantym_56I am bored out of my tiny little mind. No response from Jess or Annie about meeting up this week (should be neither surprised nor disappointed. That's how people work). I braved the shops this morning because Mum wanted to get out of the house, so I wandered aimlessly for an hour or so, looking in all the shops I go in all year round, at all the stuff I can buy all year round. I find shopping immensely boring unless I'm shopping for something specific, and then it tends to be stressful because I can't go home until I've bought some shoes!! or What on earth do I get Jess for Christmas?? or some such.
Now I'm home and have been for some time. I've watched Top Gear in the Middle East. There are two types of Top Gear - Type 1, where it's about the cars and Type 2, when it's about the journey. This year's specials have been about the journey. And I suspect there's a lot of people who are stomping their feet over the boys going to the Middle East. Even though I knew about it beforehand and knew he was fine, James's little moment was horrifying to watch but the "healing" at the end was sweet. And the entire last ten or so minutes I liked a lot, especially when they gazed upon the Baby Jesus and also especially James's little speech about the Z3's gearbox. Beautiful.
Three Men, which I watched last night, I suppose I should elaborate on in more detail than "OMG Ed's in the next one!". Well, I've always enjoyed their boat adventures, although every single year they make me feel guilty for having lived beside the sea for my entire life and never learnt to sail. Captain's got a boat (fairly obviously, given that his codename is "Captain") and we used to go out for the day on that when we were younger. The rest of the Six have been learning to sail in it but somehow, I've been passed over in that. I know that if next time I see him I were to say "Will you please teach me to sail?" he would be delighted to - when it's more sailing season, the thing's probably not even in the water at the moment - but I don't know if he'd remember in a couple of months time.
Anyway. Rory, Griff & Dara. They've got just the right mix of male mateyness and antagonism. They're not as close as the TG3 and they're not as antagonistic as, say, Paul Merton, Ian Hislop and Angus Deayton. It's lovely to watch. And they strike a nice balance of "not very good at it" and "utter incompetence". That's what irritates me about the Top Gear boys. They're three intelligent men who value education and practicality and science and engineering and stuff like that. And yet on TV they prefer to pretend to be idiots when it's perfectly clear that they're not. The scenery is nice and although I think the boys are supposed to be a kind of guide to the scenery, it's more that the scenery is just a backdrop to them. I'm watching it wrong, I know, but I like it that way. I especially loved Dara's childlike excitement at having a sweetie delivered to him in the boiler room of the puffer via the speaking tube and yes, I'm biased towards him, he's my favourite of the three, but I did think the hoodie looked better with the kilt than what either of the others were wearing. I wish it would go back a bit towards how things were in the original Three Men in a Boat, with more cooking and camping and more sense of the free time between sightseeings but y'know. There's only two hours of this. And it did provide me, many years ago, with the revelation that there is someone else in the world who drinks neither tea nor coffee. And someone famous at that! Thanks, Dara! And he puts sunglasses on the second he goes outside - I am someone who frequently finds ordinary daylight hurts my eyes and I know I look weird wearing sunglasses in the middle of winter. Ah, my secret is revealed! I am Dara O Briain!
More good TV on tonight - Live at the Apollo with Stephen K Amos, who I'm not a big fan of. Jon Richardson - I'm on the liking side of the indifferent, and Micky Flanagan who I love. I'm going to see him next year. Also Miranda's 2010 Unwrapped. That was brilliant last year - a sort of tour of the highlights of the year, only things that didn't actually happen. I enjoyed it immensely and I'm going to enjoy this year's just as much. If I can stay awake late enough, anyway. Midnight, which is when it finishes, is late for someone who's not used to being up past 11 and is very tired and liable to moods to begin with.
Tomorrow I will probably go hiking. The snow is more or less clear and I could probably do with stamping around on some hills to shake off this twitchiness. Said twitchiness, tiredness and moodiness may have been caused by really bad insomnia last night. Not only couldn't I sleep but every inch of me itched like hell. I tried listening to On The Ceiling and began to doze during the first half and then woke up in the second half and that was that. The laptop got picked up and I played on that until gone three in the morning. Rearranged the bedding so I was properly bundled up in blankets and eventually managed to get a few hours sleep. My diary tells me I went hiking on Dec 29th last year as well. Clearly two days after Christmas is done I get bored and need to go out. I had good intentions last year of doing loads of hiking, did the post-Christmas one and that was about it. I'm half tempted to go and have a bath but I know the moment I get in, I'll be seized with the desperate desire to try and map out the plot of one of the Big Book Projects and then I'll have the twitches all over again. Maybe I should go and stomp around the park for half an hour and see what I feel like later this evening.
Now I'm home and have been for some time. I've watched Top Gear in the Middle East. There are two types of Top Gear - Type 1, where it's about the cars and Type 2, when it's about the journey. This year's specials have been about the journey. And I suspect there's a lot of people who are stomping their feet over the boys going to the Middle East. Even though I knew about it beforehand and knew he was fine, James's little moment was horrifying to watch but the "healing" at the end was sweet. And the entire last ten or so minutes I liked a lot, especially when they gazed upon the Baby Jesus and also especially James's little speech about the Z3's gearbox. Beautiful.
Three Men, which I watched last night, I suppose I should elaborate on in more detail than "OMG Ed's in the next one!". Well, I've always enjoyed their boat adventures, although every single year they make me feel guilty for having lived beside the sea for my entire life and never learnt to sail. Captain's got a boat (fairly obviously, given that his codename is "Captain") and we used to go out for the day on that when we were younger. The rest of the Six have been learning to sail in it but somehow, I've been passed over in that. I know that if next time I see him I were to say "Will you please teach me to sail?" he would be delighted to - when it's more sailing season, the thing's probably not even in the water at the moment - but I don't know if he'd remember in a couple of months time.
Anyway. Rory, Griff & Dara. They've got just the right mix of male mateyness and antagonism. They're not as close as the TG3 and they're not as antagonistic as, say, Paul Merton, Ian Hislop and Angus Deayton. It's lovely to watch. And they strike a nice balance of "not very good at it" and "utter incompetence". That's what irritates me about the Top Gear boys. They're three intelligent men who value education and practicality and science and engineering and stuff like that. And yet on TV they prefer to pretend to be idiots when it's perfectly clear that they're not. The scenery is nice and although I think the boys are supposed to be a kind of guide to the scenery, it's more that the scenery is just a backdrop to them. I'm watching it wrong, I know, but I like it that way. I especially loved Dara's childlike excitement at having a sweetie delivered to him in the boiler room of the puffer via the speaking tube and yes, I'm biased towards him, he's my favourite of the three, but I did think the hoodie looked better with the kilt than what either of the others were wearing. I wish it would go back a bit towards how things were in the original Three Men in a Boat, with more cooking and camping and more sense of the free time between sightseeings but y'know. There's only two hours of this. And it did provide me, many years ago, with the revelation that there is someone else in the world who drinks neither tea nor coffee. And someone famous at that! Thanks, Dara! And he puts sunglasses on the second he goes outside - I am someone who frequently finds ordinary daylight hurts my eyes and I know I look weird wearing sunglasses in the middle of winter. Ah, my secret is revealed! I am Dara O Briain!
More good TV on tonight - Live at the Apollo with Stephen K Amos, who I'm not a big fan of. Jon Richardson - I'm on the liking side of the indifferent, and Micky Flanagan who I love. I'm going to see him next year. Also Miranda's 2010 Unwrapped. That was brilliant last year - a sort of tour of the highlights of the year, only things that didn't actually happen. I enjoyed it immensely and I'm going to enjoy this year's just as much. If I can stay awake late enough, anyway. Midnight, which is when it finishes, is late for someone who's not used to being up past 11 and is very tired and liable to moods to begin with.
Tomorrow I will probably go hiking. The snow is more or less clear and I could probably do with stamping around on some hills to shake off this twitchiness. Said twitchiness, tiredness and moodiness may have been caused by really bad insomnia last night. Not only couldn't I sleep but every inch of me itched like hell. I tried listening to On The Ceiling and began to doze during the first half and then woke up in the second half and that was that. The laptop got picked up and I played on that until gone three in the morning. Rearranged the bedding so I was properly bundled up in blankets and eventually managed to get a few hours sleep. My diary tells me I went hiking on Dec 29th last year as well. Clearly two days after Christmas is done I get bored and need to go out. I had good intentions last year of doing loads of hiking, did the post-Christmas one and that was about it. I'm half tempted to go and have a bath but I know the moment I get in, I'll be seized with the desperate desire to try and map out the plot of one of the Big Book Projects and then I'll have the twitches all over again. Maybe I should go and stomp around the park for half an hour and see what I feel like later this evening.
