Pictures for you

Some new snow pictures added on the right! In the second photo (night) what looks like rain is actually snow. Although the bad weather has been causing severe transport problems, thankfully Heathrow hasn't closed (Gatwick airport was closed this morning, and Manchester too). I also keep checking the Transport for London website and so far all the tube services seem to be operating. The tricky thing will actually be getting from my apartment to the tube station without slipping over! The roads and footpaths are so icy. Last night, as the snow became really heavy, it was peak hour and I could hear cars and (especially) trucks struggling to get a grip. Lots of revving and sliding going on. No crashes though, thankfully.

Leaving the house in 3 1/2 hours - yay! See many of you soon!

Sleek

Just had my first experience of sleet. While snow still has its charms, sleet is like being spat on by a slurpee. But without the raspberry flavouring. Insert cold shiver here.

Freaking freezing

It's so cold here that, although it hasn't snowed for well over 24 hours, the snow is still sitting on rooftops and around the park. It started snowing on Wed, which unfortunately was a day I had to run a lot of errands. My own fault, I'd been putting things off, and then karma punished me for my procrastination by making it snow on me! Feeling a snowflake land on my lips is actually quite charming - freezing my arse off less so.

Just a few days to go until I get on a plane. Not looking forward to the trip itself, but am most excited about getting home to Melbourne. Got a 7 hour stopover in Hong Kong.

Fliss is now back in Melb. She was quite melancholy on her way to the airport. I'll talk to her tomorrow, find out how her job interviews went yesterday. She was talking to St Kilda FC and the new soccer club in Melbourne. I hope she does well.

Got some good meetings set up for when I get back. With ITV and a producer who was at the Pitch competition. I've also emailed Nick Broomfield about the web series, because it's about an undocumented migrant and he's interested in the subject.

I probably won't blog much while I'm away, because most of my "readers" are in Melbourne!

See you soon! :)

Sleepy Saturday

Yesterday I finally got around to following up with people about the pitching competition win from last week. No response from anyone yet (it's so rare for anyone to reply to emails over here in my experience - although maybe that's just me!) but will chase them all in the New Year. Chasing people is exhausting, probably the most frustrating part of my move to the UK. Having said that, perhaps it's just because I know less people over here, so there's more cold emailing/calling.

Did have a good meeting yesterday with Chris Mayo, a stand-up comedian. We have already come up with an early idea for a narrative comedy series, so we'll do some more work over the coming months. I then went to see him do a small gig in Islington and I got a glimpse into the less glamourous work of stand ups - it was a small but strangely hostile crowd. Chris did OK, considering the atmosphere in the room, as did another guy called Daniel, but the MC and another guy completely bombed.

Now, on a Sat night, I'm sat at home watching telly, eating roast veges with cous cous and tzatziki. An excellent night. Felicity is out on a date. Will tell you more later...!

Winter blues

It's totally winter now. For the last 10 days it has rained heavily almost every day and rarely managed to get into double figures temperature-wise.

Last week was chaos, but this week is busy in a more manageable way. Shoot last Wed went well, although I felt so bad for the main guy who is our key interviewee in the video. He's a current service user, an ex-offender who is receiving support from the charity and he is clearly severely damaged from long-term, hard-core drug use. His interview was a bit like pulling teeth, he struggles to form coherent sentences and in between questions he (I'm not exaggerating here) looked like he was passing out! And then last week we needed him for re-enactments, I had wanted to hire an actor but the charity insisted it should be "authentic"...

Well, it was that. This poor guy was shivering and pale, he frankly looked like shit and I felt bad asking him to stand in the cold and do the take over and over to get the shot right. We have ended up with something that looks fine, but if I'd been able to use an actor I could have shot so much more! I just felt so bad for this vulnerable shell of a human being.

First cut of the edit is all done now. Showing it to the client tomorrow. I have no idea what they'll say, but I'm happy with it.

The other news is that the love of my life, who is on the other side of the world, has been very unwell and was in hospital over the weekend. He had an inflamed (not sure if it was also infected?) gallbladder. Obviously intense pain (he was put on quite a lot of morphine) and vomiting, really awful. Anyway, he is feeling somewhat better, despite ignoring my advice to take a day off shooting the kid's TV show he's filming in Sydney. He will probably have to have surgery in January.

I've never felt so far away as I did when he called me on Sat night, he'd already been in hospital for 10 hours. I wish the friend who admitted him had called me earlier, not that I could do anything but I hated being so far behind, it just made the distance seem even greater.

So, ups and downs as usual. Looking forward to seeing you all in just over 2 weeks.

Think I promised to give you the link to our new script submission scheme, you can find all the details here!

I won!

I won the pitching comp! It was quite fun actually and I was surprised to win because there seemed to be a lot of good ideas. In something like that you expect a few stinkers, but there weren't any. Some of the actual pitches were better than others but mostly strong concepts.

Anyway, it's not even 6:30am and I have to drive to Surrey to film today. Haven't slept properly for the last 2 nights so hopefully adrenaline will see me through and then I can go to be early tonight!

Ugh.