COMING THIS WEEK
A TEST OF SPIRIT
A TEST OF GUTS
A TEST OF TWO VARIETIES OF CANNED MEAT

WELCOME TO MEAT WARS: PEK CHOPPED PORK VERSUS YE OLDE OAK HAM

There was much discussion at work last week over the mertis of canned ham/'meat' products. This was partly influenced by Pek chopped pork's adverts with Pauline Quirke, where she espoused us to 'taste the Pek difference'. I like Pek, I love Pek. However, for every ying, there must be a yang, and this yang is the local, Sheffield produced contender - Ye Olde Oak.

Who shall win this canned meat clash of the titans? STAY TUNED.

Again, and as always, totally based on gut feeling and no more!

The Stolen Earth
Turn Left
Journey's End
Midnight
Fires of Pompeii
Forest of the Dead
Silence in the Library
Planet of the Ood
The Unicorn and the Wasp
Partners in Crime
The Doctor's Daughter
The Sontaran Stratagem
The Poison Sky

Hmm, a weirder arrangement than I thought it would be this year....though although it looks like I absolutely hated the Sontaran 2 parter, it's not as clear as that, and there's no real 'bottom place' this year as it has to be said the series was uniformly top notch...

Here we go, two and a bit years of wedding madness START TODAY!

Here, for those who are uninitiated, is where we are getting married - the Cathedral Church of the Immaculate Conception, Sligo. Hereeverafter known as 'Sligo Cathedral', to save me having to say that every time:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=bZAWaZ1X7LQ

And here is where we'll be having the reception, the Sligo Park Hotel. It's about five or ten minutes by car from the Cathedral, and a twenty minute stroll from the town centre (or a fifteen minute mince or powerwalk). We'll be in the Sligo Park Suite, and it's got a massive bar with all manner of drinkerypokery behind it. The rooms are nice too, and the food looks like good wedding stuffing food. There'll be one HELL of a knees up in here!

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=bZAWaZ1X7LQ

The wall on the right will open up too. And the Garth Brookes will NOT be played at the wedding.

I suppose I'd best fill the world in on Saturday then:

The location was the VIP pod on the Yorkshire Wheel at the National Railway Museum in York. It gives a spiffing view over York. I'd arranged it so there was a bottle of Champagne available too (and glasses, natch). There's also a leather sofa, a glass floor and a CD player (which if I'd known about I'd have got my own music. Buggeration). I think Karen had almost clocked that something was brewing, but I managed to bluff it my making out it was because she;d just got a new job etc etc. Anyway, wheel duly moves, and by some chance of fate we stop riiight at the top - about 300 foot above York. And Gary thinks that this is the moment. So, with an elegant sleight of hand combined with a perfect bit of misdirection (thank YOU newly-gay mentalist Derren Brown and your book of handy hints on the above) I swapped my camera for a box with a bit of shiny metal in it. And....the rest is bloody obvious really, although I'm REEAALLY proud of how I managed to turn and drop to one knee in one smooooth movement. On a glass floor. Karen said yes straight away (well, I say she said Yes, she actually said Yeeeeaarrggh, which is like yes but without the crucial 'es' bit after 'ye'. It took a bit of clarification and consultation with a Priest, but we reckon it's legally binding and no affidavit needed to be signed, ALRIGHT?).

And after that we happily spun around for about oooh, time, until we had to get off. We'd run out of Champagne, we knew Karen's Dad was probably about to have thrombo of anticipation, and we both needed to pee in the imminent future. Hey, engaged life doesn't come without its burdens. Then, after an hour of calling various parties and breaking the news to Sky, the Beeb and my brother, we retreated to the lower decks of Bettys and had their celebration tea. And they gave us free heart shaped chocolate (RRP £5.99, so over a tenner up on the day so far) and a nice lady congratulated us on our news, even though we'd never met her. And then back to the hotel, cos engagement or no engagement, Doctor Who was on and we both really needed to see it.

So today - we're both sickeningly happy, I've never seen Karen so happy and relaxed, and apparently most of Sligo is in on the news courtesy of Karen's Dad, who is apparently horrendously gushily happy. We're already having to think about the wedding and how we'll do it, but it still looks like a Sligo wedding. Anyone know a Methodist minister that's willing to travel?

For those that may not yet know...

ME AND KAREN ARE ENGAGED!

HOOOORAY!

Ahem.

For those who don't already know - one has a Masters! Hooray! And yes, I am happy with the result. Very happy indeed. And very surprised.

It's been a funny old week.

Some taxi-arse just ran into the back of my lovely Kia Mentor! He broke my foglight! Bastard!

I hate driving. It's hurts my neck when people run into me. Grrrrrrr!

You might all get tired of me rabbiting on about classic telly: but apropos the Blockbusters opening titles (http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=kKhnVvHWJ3A&feature=related).

The big, shiny, building at the end with the little octagon on the top? That's what I thought the Central Television building used to be. And I thought that the corridors were like the ones as you zoom down towards the studio too. Maybe I thought the needed the big opening doors so that Bob Holness could arrive by helicopter or something - I mean, come on! He must have had one, after all, he presented the show.

I was always a bit disappointed by the Yorkshire Television building on Kirkstall Road as a result.

Nobody else will know what I'm talking about but.....

http://www.myspace.com/kickandtheteeth

A DISCO VERSION OF THE 'SORRY' (with Mr. Ronnie Corbett, natch) THEME!

*Rocks out*

There's something very 'Aberystwyth' about being stuck on a horrendously unsafe cliff railway (the bloody rails don't line up! I could open the door to the carriage while it was moving! The sleepers had all moved with a landslip!) with a midget and a really, really rubbish crossdresser. 'She' had five o clock shadow! And no wig! Or makeup! In fact, all 'she' had was a falsetto voice (which 'she' kept slipping out of) and some vaguely female clothes.

On second thoughts, it might just have been a bloke. But then why make such an effort to look like a rubbish transvestite?

I just can't work the world out anymore.

It's in!

*THIS PERSON (CREATED 4/10/01982) HAS NOW BEEN RE-CLASSIFIED AS INACTIVE AND NO LONGER PRODUCTIVE.
RATIONALE = 25 YEARS
RETENTION SCHEDULE = SHELVE/CONSIDER DESTRUCTION*

(In other words - happy 25th birthday me!)

Hmm, I was honestly going to do this after I'd re-watched series 3, but with a pile of DVDs as high as the Cybercontroller to get through (including Casino Royale, which I bought in March, and V for Vendetta - though that has to wait until Karen has read the comic book version, and as she's still halfway through Harry Potter it might be Christmas before we get disappointed by it)

So - on what I remember of my gut feelings:

The Family of Blood
Human Nature
Utopia
Blink
Smith and Jones
Gridlock
The Sound of Drums
The Shakespeare Code
Last of the Timelords
The Runaway Bride
The Lazarus Experiment
Evolution of the Daleks
Daleks in Manhattan
42

Hmm. It seems wrong to split the two/three parters though, as they really make up one whole story. So, on that basis:

Human Nature/Family of Blood
Blink
Smith and Jones
Gridlock
Utopia/Sound of Drums/Last of the Timelords
The Shakespeare Code
The Runaway Bride
The Lazarus Experiment
Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks
42

There, that seems a bit fairer, especially on the 'Master' trilogy, which was is possibly the most totally hatstand set of episodes I've seen since 'The Happiness Patrol'. And well 'Human Nature', one of the best sci-fi novels of the 90s in anybody's book was always going to totally steamroller everything else wasn't it? And, proof if any be needed, that Steven Moffatt is possibly the most consistently brilliant writer the series has had since Doug Adams in the late 70s, but I still insist that Russell is probably the best script merchant to grace the show since the late, great Robert Holmes - Mofatt and Cornell might be able to turn out wonderful one off pieces, but Russell (9 times out of 10) does something so bloody well imaginative or just sodding amazing that I clap like a happy seal - car chase with a flying TARDIS on a motorway! Derek Jacobi being the Master! John Simm singing the Scissor Sisters! Gallifrey being *exactly* like it should be! Hospitals on the Moon! I doff my hat to you sir! And can Christmas please hurry the *flip* up please?

Photos up on Facebook for those who wish to see!

I can hereby confirm that the abseil did indeed happen! Slightly watermarked pictures can be found: http://www.purepix.co.uk/baitings/img_3796.htm
http://www.purepix.co.uk/baitings/img_3797.htm
http://www.purepix.co.uk/baitings/img_3798.htm
http://www.purepix.co.uk/baitings/img_3799.htm
And for pure 'oh shittage' here's http://www.purepix.co.uk/baitings/img_3800.htm

PROOF!

I'm sorry to announce that on the advice of several counsels more learn-ed than I, the suit might have to be off because:

a) The tie might get caught in the rope and strangle me
b) I only have one suit.

A shame I know.

Ladies, Gentlemen, and assorted reprobates of the archival community;

This Sunday, at about 14.15, I shall be dangling off Baitings Reservoir (near Ripponden) in the name of charity - Kidney Research UK to be exact. As its all in a very worthy cause (not least the potential hilarity as it get my foot caught in a rope, spin upside down and smack my nose on some very, very hard concrete), I was wondering if any of you chaps would feel good enough to toss some donations their way?

It really doesn't matter what you give, but anything you do give will be very much appreciated by the potential 2.5 MILLION people in the UK alone who will contract Chronic Kidney disease in the next few years. In the North East, there are over 8,000 people receiving treatment for Kidney failure, 4,000 are on Dialysis and 750 are still waiting for a transplant. For those of you in London, there's 1,280 on the list for a transplant, and for you lot in East Anglia, there's currently no way for children to have dialysis - they have to go all the way to London, three times a week.

You can donate online at http://www.justgiving.com/garybrannan

Anyway, enough of my begging. I have to find a treatment for rope burns....

Today at work, quite by chance, I found someone called Derek Judoon, a constable in the Leeds City Police in the 1890s.

Justice is swift!

My name is Gary Brannan. I finished an Archive course, and I woke up in Wakefield. Am I mad, in a coma, or back in time? Whatever's happened, it's like I've landed on a different planet. Now maybe if I can work out the reason, I can get home......

What ho chaps, and a Merriest of the Christmases to you all! I hope you all got something you like under the tree, and if you didn't remember it's not strictly the tree's fault you're picky.