US remake of British comedy in 'not that bad' shocker: The Office (Windows Media Player).

In other news, an escaped python may be living round the corner from me.

10:18

. . .

Book 8: The Complete Yes Minister by Jonathan Lynn and Anthony Jay
This is the first book of my 50 that I actually bought in a shop (albeit the Oxfam bookshop in Hove, which is probably my favourite place for hidden treasures at the moment). I'm a tad too young to have watched this when it was originally on, but I learned to love it later. The book takes the form of Jim Hacker's 'diaries', supposedly collated and edited by the authors. There are nice little touches to get round the problems of Hacker not always being present in the story, or not fully aware of what was going on (quite often), such as memos discovered in Sir Humphrey's files, personal recollections from Bernard, TV and radio transcripts etc. They COULD have just published the scripts, really, but this format allows for all sorts of 'editorial' insertions - illustrative stories from real life government in the 1960s, glosses on civil service jargon and practices etc etc. Very entertaining.

09:14

. . .

Today is officially the crappiest day of the year, proven by science. I must say it hasn't been much worse for me than any other Monday. Which is not saying much, admittedly.

Last week I did two things which I have never done before and hope never to do again - not many weeks where I can say that really. The first was the previously mentioned marriage registration. The second was far less fun: trying to pick out the man who mugged me from an ID parade. Although it wasn't really a parade as it's all done on video these days. But it was also a week of SOUFFLÉ (Thurs), HIGH TEA (Sun) and THE WEST WING (ongoing) so more positive than negative overall.

14:41

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