• Mood: awake
• Music: Tutti Frutti, BBC

Good evening

(1) A work friend is spending his six-week sabbatical in Perth, Australia -- the west coast generally. Does anyone have any suggestions for places he should go? He's a nice fellow, adventurous, and he's looking for outdoor stuff and places to eat. I'd really appreciate it if anyone could drop a few suggestions.

(2) UKNova has been providing wonderful things for me lately. Torrents for two long-unavailable BBC Scotland series have appeared and I am hoping they are as wonderful as I remember them.

Tutti Frutti was the first big acting break for both Emma Thompson and Robbie Coltrane, a 1980s comedy-drama about a knackered 1960s rock band whose lead singer dies in a tragic cross of the deaths of Mama Cass and Eddie Cochrane, just before they're about to go on a tour of Scotland's greatest toilets. nightclubs. I watched its first repeat run and for some reason there was never another so I am hoping that it's as funny as I remember it being.

I never quite understood why it didn't get a video or DVD release. I suspect its to do with getting releases for all the 50s/60s rock classics. Anyway. Glasgow accents. Emma Thompson with an Elvis quiff. A very funny, much younger, slightly lither Robbie Coltrane.

It has a fabulous rant about being single and living alone, which I empathised with to an almost worrying degree.

Takin' Over The Asylum was David Tennant's first role, albeit a supporting one. It's another black comedy/drama about a knackered sadsack hospital DJ who ends up running the radio station at a mental hospital. I never did see the end of this -- and again, it's never been repeated when I could see it and never released on DVD. (Rights issues again, maybe?)

I can burn if so required. I'm half -watching Tutti Frutti now and it is as good as I remember.

(3) I've been reading sagas. By which I don't mean Norse stuff, I mean potboiler romances set in 1930s Liverpool. Good god, the bad, uninspired writing and plotting. Yet I wanted to turn the page and I read the damned thing in three days. People popping out babies and getting married out of nowhere. One-armed sparky heroines. The heroic Irish mammy. Absolutely inexplicable.

Now I am reading Stuart: A Life Backwards by Alexander Masters, which is as fantastic as the saga was ridiculous. Anyone else read this?

Next: The People's Act of Love by James Meek.

(4) I am very out of practice at writing these things. Writing anything really.

(5) I watched two Stargate: Atlantis episodes. Once you have the characters fixed in your head, why on *Earth* would you ever want to watch the damned thing again when you can read fanfiction that is of almost infinitely higher quality?

(6) Work <--- said in a sonorous tone, as if echoed off a tombstone and filtered through a miasma of painful despair. Or something.

(7) predictivememo, I hope you're doing all right.