So, just to get this out of the way... It's May, and it's bloody freezing. The rain I can understand - the nature of weather is that the conditions on and around smallish landmasses, like this sceptred isle, tend to be very variable. A few days of sun generally means a couple of weeks of rain to varying degrees. What I don't get is the sudden drop in temperature. Weird.
And, of course, with all the high winds we've been having, that tarpaulin on my roof has been rattled free of the bricks that were holding it down. I put in a call to the managing agents yesterday evening and, while it was hanging in front of my door when I left for work this morning, it was nowhere to be seen when I got home again. I can only hope that means it's been re-seated and, as far as I can tell, I'm not getting any water leaking in from the rather heavy rain currently lashing at my windows... but it's worrying nonetheless.
At least the managing agents have now got a couple of estimates on replacing the roof... though that's still no guarantee of it happening soon.
More weird dreaming last night, though I forgot all but two parts, which I wrote down - briefly - this morning. One part featured me complaining about my shoes (which happens in real life sometimes - I wish I knew how the toes got so scuffed all the time!), only for my father to set to work polishing them overnight. When I got up the next morning, they were slathered with polish... I had to get a rag and wipe them over... but, having done so, they looked almost perfect.
The other part - also featuring a 'waking up' scene, strangely - involved a banging at the door to my flat, which roused me from my bed... only to find a fully armed soldier at my door. I sense a connection to the tarpaulin...
Also this morning, I put my rubbish out on the mezzanine, ready to take down to the bins when I actually left for work and, when the time came, I found the damned thing had been torn open. Not much had spilled out, but I did need to get another bag to put the original bag in... Can that have been birds, or could it be that I have rats/mice to worry about, as well as ants? (Not that I'm worrying about ants still... much...)
I'd been intending to write a bit about this last weekend's Doctor Who, and the strange 'sequel' to The Suspicions of Mr Whicher that appeared in ITV's schedule on Sunday night. Had that been the sole content of the post, no doubt I would have named it "Who and Which(er)"... Oh, the lost comedic possibilities...
The former introduced the new style of Cybermen... Now, I quite liked the first kind of Cyberman this rebooted Who has given us, though they owed quite a substantial debt to RoboCop in their design. I would also applaud the movement coach who taught the performers how to move in those suits. However, there was something not quite right about the 'Delete!.. Delete!..' schtick (a bit too much like a sanitised version of the Daleks' 'Exterminate!'?). The new look Cybermen, created for a script by Neil Gaiman, 'Nightmare in Silver', owe a significant debt to Iron Man - they're leaner, meaner, constantly upgrading... and have large lights in their chests. I don't remember enough about the Cybermen from the original Doctor Who series, but there's clearly some cross pollination between them and Star Trek's Borg, and the way it was casually mentioned in this episode made it all the more chilling than any of the more graphic stuff that's been shown before (and don't get me started on that 'Cyberwoman' episode of Torchwood). Yet again, the story could have done with more time to help flesh things out, and the escape at the end was rather too convenient, but the episode was decent enough... Now looking forward to the grand finale of this series (at least until the Christmas special, and Matt Smith's rumoured departure).
The latter was a curious state of affairs, being wholly fictional rather than a dramatisation of further true-life events and investigations. I honestly wasn't giving it my fullest attention, but it did seem riddled with clichés. The character of Mr Whicher certainly deserves more examination, but I'm not sure this was quite the right tack to take. I might give it another chance if it turns up in the schedules again...
Meanwhile, the glorious Gillian Anderson returns to our screens in a new police drama. Yet more clichés abound, not least because this is set in Northern Ireland (signs of the 'Troubles' keep popping up) and features a kinky serial killer (seriously, how many more kinky serial killers can we get on television?)... Having been introduced to the "Jack... Draw Me Like One Of Your French Girls" meme, the posing of the victims was often in danger of making me laugh, which is clearly not the reaction the makers were going for. It's a bit po-faced... Ms Anderson plays a Detective Superintendent who mooches around at home wearing flowery pyjama bottoms, a tank top and a mud pack in the opening scene (phwoar, eh?), then later there's a gratuitous scene of her swimming in a hotel pool (wearing a swimsuit, naturally...). It's one of those dramas where you can pretty much see where it's going... it hasn't even hidden the identity of the killer, making it one of those dramas... but it might just be interesting enough to keep watching. Certainly, Gillian Anderson is surely far more interesting to watch in this kind of show than Mr Smarmy/Broody/Shouty Tennant...
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