The Changing of the Clocks and The Missing Hour on the Wireless Or: British Summer Time My Arse

Well those buggers in Greenwich decided to fiddle with the clocks as they do biannually just to mess with my head (alright, that might not be the main reason but it works anyway) and now I find myself waking up late and not being able to get to sleep early enough. Damn you time, you manmade concept, you.

Last night I found myself getting progressively more awake as the night drew on. I had slept in for some time after an exceedingly long day travelling to Bath to watch the game against Harlequins and back on Saturday. It was entirely worth it though, as Bath grabbed a convincing three try victory with Olly Barkley lining up alongside Butch James for the first time this season and spawned one of the greatest sports headlines I've ever read in today's Guardian 'Bath Reap Barkley-James Harvest' (those born after 1970 see here). Anyway, I digress. I sat down in front of the excellent Wonders of the Solar System and watched Brian Cox (no, not that Brian Cox, this Brian Cox) explain how Jupiter affects asteroids and nudges them towards our planet in about 15 seconds and in a clearer manner than any school science teacher ever.

It's a remarkable show and Prof. Cox (think Jon Ronson, Alex James and Simon Armitage stuck in that machine from The Fly with Sir Patrick Moore) is a immensely knowledgable, enthusiastic host, with a good deal of charm and an uncanny ability to break down massively intimidating, complex particle- and astrophysics into understandable nuggets without resorting to hokey soundbites. Watching 'Wonders' is very much like watching a fireworks display, I find myself constantly 'ooh' ing and 'ahh' ing at the amazing vistas and the terrifying power of science. Cox sits beside a volcano in Ethiopia, indie-musician hair tousled by the wind (what the Prof would no doubt refer to as 'the beauty of physics') and explains how the magma bubbling to the surface in the pit of this volcano accurately represents what occurs on the surface of Jupiter's smallest moon, Io. Assertions that 'Wonders' could well be the 'Cosmos' of our generation are well-founded, I feel and Prof. Cox will no doubt ascend to the pantheon of great British documentary makers to join the Attenboroughs and Clarks of this world.

Well, several hours after all that excitement, at 1 in the morning I was still awake. I went to the bathroom to brush my teeth and turned the radio on (yeah, bathroom radio, what of it?) and caught the end of the shipping forecast (still don't know what it means, it could well be a big in-joke between all the fishermen and the Maritime and Coast Guard Agency). The continuity announcer then informed me that it was the end of programming. Yup, I'd stayed up so late that the radio had run out, how about that? Then they played the national anthem. Tremendous, why don't more radio stations do this? I bloody love Radio 4 for that (and for all the excellent comedy, not least The Unbelievable Truth which by happy coincidence starts a new series tonight at 6.30).

Eventually I made it to bed and listened to BBC 7. Poirot was on. There'd been a murder in France and Poirot was on the case. Interestingly all the French people spoke with perfect English accents, but Poirot maintained his comedy French accent, bloody Walloon. When I went to see my relatives in Flanders I noticed that although Agatha Christie was seemingly popular, Poirot was conspicuously absent. There's a healthy disrespect between the Flemish and the Walloons and was with this heartwarming reassurance that I eventually fell asleep.

I'm still knackered though and its now chucking it down, so congratulations on that British Summer Time. I want that hour back goddammit.

Disjointed Ramblings About BBC 7... and Let the Right One In

Apologies in advance, this post is likely to be somewhat bitty for a number of reasons. Firstly, it's snowing outside which means that I'll simply have to mention it (in a kind of 'ooh isn't that nice' way rather than the prepsoterous sensationalised '60,000 people to die' kind of way). Secondly, I'm supposed to be going out to collect voxpops for a radio station and I might be cut down in my prime to become some poorly-paid hack/Shackleton. Thirdly, I managed the grand total of 4 and a half hour's sleep last night, so this could well make no sense at all. Right that's all the disclaimers out of the way, so let's get on with it.

The first issue I'd like to discuss is BBC 7. I know what you're thinking- that's not an issue, that's a radio station and well, you'd be right. The issue is probably the undervaluation of this station which provides insomniacs like me with some rather excellent distractions while we're trying and inevitably failing to get to sleep. I guess it could be termed a Specialist station, but then that makes it sound like some weird radio porn (a bit like the 'specialist music' section in smaller branches of HMV- I just want to look at some blues or folk records, don't make me feel like a pervert in the process). BBC 7 features an extensive library of classic and contemporary comedy, drama and documentaries, but the section that I rely most heavily on is the Crime and Thrillers from 1 o'clock onwards, currently featuring the excellent Sherlock Holmes recordings made by Carleton Hobbs and Norman Shelley. It's a rather excellent way of assimilating curios from the sea of classic fiction into your consciousness too- until a couple of weeks ago they had been playing all 30 episodes of Russell Thorndike's Doctor Syn series', narrated by the surprisingly versatile Rufus Sewell.

Then there's the 15 minute drama at 2 o'clock, which since Monday of last week has been H. E. Bates' Love For Lydia, a semi-autobiographical tale set in the roaring twenties, following a journalist named Richardson as he falls for an heiress and proceeds to claim his as one of the most depressing lives ever (when in reality it's the other characters who have a right to feel hard done by). Drawled in Tim Pigott-Smith's rich baritone, we follow the young journo as he is enchanted and summarily rejected by the titular Lydia, whose other suitors proceed to die in increasingly depressing (but also accidentally mildly comic) circumstances. The first fell drunkenly off a bridge while Lydia and Richardson were busy arguing and then last night Tom was found dead with a bullet wound, a policeman claiming that he accidentally shot himself while attempting to traverse a stile ('one of the dangers of carrying a gun at night' !!). Now, I'm largely unfamiliar with the source text, but we have run out of male characters apart from the family's driver Blackie (whose father died) of whom Lydia is a 'business partner', so I can only imagine that he will perhaps drive a car containing all the remaining characters (including Nancy, the only character I have any sympathy for really) off a bridge while shooting himself.

The feature that perpetually torments me is the children's programmes that begin somewhere around five o'clock and feature singing, excitable annoyances (and that's just the presenters...) and an alarming propensity to rasp loudly "Wake Up!" in a curious, terrifying whisper that causes me to sit bolt upright every time, expecting to see the children from M. R. James' Lost Hearts or perhaps Eli from Let The Right One In sitting at the end of my bed. Actually that leads me on to another quick rant. As I mentioned in my post about Highlander, there is a Hollywood remake of Let the Right One In slated for later this year with Cloverfield's Matt Reeves at the helm. As if that wasn't bad enough, the English version will be known as Let Me In (you know you're in trouble when you have to dumb down a five word title for the American market). Director of the original, Tomas Alfredson, was suitably skeptical about what will likely be another trashy horror that somewhat misses the point of the original, quoted as saying 'remakes should be made of movies that aren't very good, it gives you the chance to fix whatever has gone wrong.' Now there's certainly nothing wrong with Alfredson's marvellous adaptation, featuring stellar performances and brilliant cinematography and it was even Mark Kermode's film of the year last year- so why remake it? Well, Reeves offered the defence that he 'has nothing but respect for the film' and even author of the original novel, John Ajvide Lindquist, said he was excited that it would be following the plot of his novel rather than Alfredson's film and that the end result could be quite different. Simon Oakes of Hammer Pictures (yep, that Hammer Pictures) claimed that it would be very close to the original (shooting down Lindquist's dreams in a fiction-y fireball) but made 'very accessible to a wider audience'. So that's any hope well and truly flushed down the Hollywood remake toilet then...