Category: TV

Books · brain chat · TV

In which it is still fkn January

FrancescaLeave a comment

Hello!

I am on a break from my assignments (aka if I look at any of the relevant documents again today I might cry because I keep working on them but they aren’t getting any closer to being finished and it’s so horrible it’s crossed back round into being funny) so I thought I’d do something I like for the rest of the day, aka read Private Eye and say hi to you all. How has January been? Here is a brief summary of mine so far:

  • Finally watched that pirate show and I get what all the fuss is about
  • Learnt what yin yoga is (if you’re one of the people I used to work for at a yoga studio, I promise I knew what yin yoga was when we worked together. Then I removed the information from my brain to make space for new stuff and had to relearn. I absolutely knew what I was talking about when I wrote your marketing copy. Absolutely.)
  • Read The Book Thief and holy shit the people who call it a classic were spot on it was devastating
  • My tax code changed so I basically got a really big bonus from my job so I spent a good three days feeling like Scrooge McDuck when he slides down all that money. Until I remembered it’s 2023 and by June one tea bag will cost £87
  • Remembered that I really like Fleetwood Mac. How have I made it to 27 without realising how much everyone should like Fleetwood Mac. Also I didn’t know Everywhere was a Fleetwood Mac song because as this list has established I have the brain of a sea snail. I don’t know who I thought wrote it. I think I have song blindness.

Otherwise it’s been a quiet one. If I ever become one of those wealthy-ish ladies with a lot of small pet dogs and a husband who died in mysterious circumstances, I think I might take the whole month of January to recline in the bath and eat Christmas cake.

Might do that anyway to be honest.

How are you coping with 2023 so far? Everyone I know is on the verge of a nervous breakdown, including the people who are normally quite together. My working theory is that it’s because the last two to three years have been week after week of varying degrees of ‘THE WORLD IS ENDING AND YOUR GOVERNMENT HAS GONE ON HOLIDAY.’ And now everyone is like taffy right before you stretch it so far it breaks.

How’s that for a metaphor. That right there is why I have almost-double figure Patreon membership! I’m going to fuck off now before I can descend into talking even more shite than normal. I hope you’re well, is what I’m saying. Cling on. It’s still light at 5pm now. We’re nearly at St Brigid’s Day and the UK has only had one prime minister all year!

Look after yourselves,
Francesca

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TV

no spoilers but I couldn’t be bothered to properly finish this post

FrancescaLeave a comment

Evening! I don’t particularly have anything to say, but I ate a snack quite late so I’m sleepy but I feel like lying down would be quite a bad idea. Sooo…. hello. How was your April? Did you enjoy the mini heatwave? Have you got hayfever yet? I had this monster cold with such bad congestion that I’ve still got scabs inside my nose, so bring it on, pollen. On the plus side, I was so ill I took a day off and slept through a lot of finally watched Line of Duty. My favourite part of the programme thus far has been the evolution of Steve’s waistcoats.

To be honest, that’s all I’ve got to say. Turns out I’m ‘about to crash with laptop open’ sleepy and I can’t even be bothered to source a gif of Steve in a waistcoat. I bet there are loads. I had a look on Twitter and a cursory scroll of @bbcone indicates there are some hardcore fans out there, but I think that particular rabbit hole is one for another day. Is there a directory for fandoms? So I could type in ‘waistcoat evolution’ or ‘steve’ and filter to British TV>Line of Duty and tadahhh Kaz from Hull has a crime drama Tumblr with 12 posts about wardrobe evolution. It would save a lot of searching, I’m just saying.

dragonnovel · TV

Look Out for the Ides of March. Ish.

FrancescaLeave a comment

Morning. I can’t remember the last time I blogged this early, but I can barely remember the last time I blogged, so.

I can’t believe that February has been such a short month on paper, yet 2019 already feels as long as 2018 did. Then again, in the last month I’ve moved house, edited dragonnovel to Seriously, This Looks Like a Book levels of completeness, run a little marketing workshop (yeah, me talking to a room of strangers!) and wrestled the Mini to the side of the road after it broke down going round a roundabout. Shout out to Paul the RAC guy for towing me 3 miles in fog to the garage. Bad vibes to the lady in the Range Rover who watched the tow van pull out of a junction and tried to fit between the van and the broken-down car the van was pulling. Also, your lights were off.

Frank Iero fuck off gif
from Tumblr

Anyway, there is a point to my 8am drop-in. Well, other than my inherent need to post here at least once in every calendar month in case I look like a flake. I’m putting together something very, very cool and dragonnovel-shaped for patrons, which I hope will be ready to go in March. It’s not quite done cooking yet, but I’m more excited about it than I have been about anything I’ve made for a while so this is basically me warning you that in a few weeks’ time, you’re going to see quite a lot of overexcited Tweets and probably a fair bit of blogging. IT’S GOING TO BE COOL. You’re also going to see a lot of caps-lock. Not sorry.

I need to have a shower/wrestle my hair into a ponytail/drive my newly-fixed Mini to work so byeeeee. Wait. Who’s been watching The Umbrella Academy? I got a 30-day Netflix trial out of curiosity and couldn’t believe a) how fun and weird the entire universe is and b) how much I had forgotten how fun and weird the entire universe is. I mean, I probably won’t renew Netflix until the second series airs, but still.

 

Sherlock proposing to Janine Series 3 GIF Late Night Ramblings of Someone Who Just Edited About 100 Sentences and Ironically Can’t Work Out How to End This One dot dot dot
Indifferent Ignorance · Internet · TV

Late Night Ramblings of Someone Who Just Edited About 100 Sentences and Ironically Can’t Work Out How to End This One dot dot dot

FrancescaLeave a comment

So I’ve had a long day and I promised myself I was winding up the work, because the only thing more depressing than being at home on a Friday evening in your pyjamas is being at home on a Friday evening in your pyjamas, writing. But I actually have the Freedom app installed so my Internet cuts off at 11pm so I had a mooch around the stats pages of my websites and it turns out this post on marriage proposal ideas from 2011 is my most visited ever. It doesn’t even make sense. The post, I mean, not the fact a lot of clearly desperate people are continuing all the way to the third page of Google to get advice on how to propose. Ironically, my parents are now separated although I still do not know how they got engaged.

Sherlock proposing to Janine Series 3 GIF
from the BBC I think

Anyway. I’m writing this at 10:40pm because the stats page seems to think the better-performing blogs are the ones from 7 years ago that I put zero thought into and contain so many in-jokes I can’t actually remember what my original point was. Ugh, youth.

I lied about the writing. It’s not depressing, it’s really good. I’m tentatively hopeful I might finish it before I hit my mid-twenties. I kind of want to go back to writing it right now but my eyes are fuzzy. Ugh, human restrictions. Happy weekend!

TV

Be Right Back I’m a TV-Induced Puddle

FrancescaLeave a comment

I’ve just watched the entire last series of Sherlock I know it’s only three episodes and as a writer I spent about six hours thinking:

Professor McGonagall Harry Potter applause gif
from giphy.com

But as a viewer I was thinking:

Dorothy Wizard of Oz gif
from gifphy.com

dog falling over gif
Found on Tumblr I think

from Tumblr
from Tumblr

boy cuddling chicken GIF
from Tumblr

Not necessarily in that order.

Arghhh I’m going to go and stare at a wall and marvel at how good the people who make the show are.

Arghhhhh.

August 2016 · Complaints · DISCUSS. · Sport · TV

Is It Just Me or Do the Olympics Prompt a Breakdown

Francesca1 Comment

I’ve been having really odd reactions to the Olympics so please help me out and tell me if you’ve experienced anything similar (no, I’m not talking about checking out the Team GB diving team, although I do encourage you to do that). When I’m watching TV, usually with a plate of food or a cup of tea, I either think:

This is so incredibly inspiring. Look at that perfectly regular human being who has worked their bones into dust for four-plus years to become one of the best sportspeople in the world. They are so deserving of our attention even if they don’t win anything because they are a testament to the human spirit and work ethic. I think I will put down my food and do my physio and go for a run tomorrow.

Or:

That person is my age. That person is five years younger than me. What was I doing five years ago? I was blogging about MCR, which has clearly propelled me into a fascinating, rewarding and financially secure life. That person has more visible muscles on their stomach than I do in all my limbs. I’ve been curled on Instagram checking out Team GB’s diving team for approximately four hours and haven’t done physio for days. But I’m actually just going to eat some carbohydrates and compare myself to a world class gymnast, and feel bitter that my PE teachers were nearly all so shit that I’ll never know if I could have been able to do a somersault.

BELOW AVERAGE from The Perks of Being a Wallflower from taylorbtw.tumblr.com
from taylorbtw.tumblr.com

Sometimes I veer from one reaction to another in the time it takes an athlete to fall off a pommel horse. Sometimes I eat carbs then do physio then eat more carbs. Is anyone else experiencing this? Is there a cure?

One thing I do like about the Olympics is the idea of working in four year cycles towards a goal. Athletes aiming for the Olympics have a clear deadline and an ambition that will get them out of bed when they would rather be anywhere but where they are, and I could do with that – or anything that would help me focus on something that isn’t my growing resentment toward everything I’ve ever done to ensure I’m a money-strapped freelancer with a broken desk chair and a complicated CV.

This isn’t me drowning in self pity; four years ago I had just finished my GCSEs and was in the middle of learning that supermarket bread wanted to kill me, and now I’m a healthier-ish indie writer who was self employed at 18 with zero debts and a burgeoning business. Not many 20 year olds can say that they decided what they wanted to and immediately did it. My life is not terrible.

But I want it to be better.

I think I might work on those four year goals.

Art · Books · History & Old Stuff · May 2016 · TV · Videos

‘Romeo, Romeo, where are you Romeo?’

FrancescaLeave a comment

I read the other day that the average deposit for a home in the UK is currently £80,000 and as my reactions were limited to either throwing myself into work or jumping off the QEII bridge, I’ve been writing a lot. I don’t want to show it to any of you yet (for a staunch non-spiritualist I am ridiculously superstitious about sharing work before it’s done) but I’m quite quietly pleased with myself for having picked up a pen.

It got me thinking about that other great writer great pieces of literature, and I wondered if any of you have been watching Upstart Crow? It’s on BBC2 on Monday nights should probably be required viewing for every student studying Shakespeare. It was written by the same guy who co-wrote Blackadder, so maybe we should just appoint him head of schools and be done with it.

Imagine the exam papers.

 

(All Hail) Creation · Films · Internet · May 2016 · TV · Videos

A Really Tenuous 6 Degrees of Separation feat. GotG & Troye Sivan

FrancescaLeave a comment

I GOT A NEW KEYBOARD AND LIFE IS GLORIOUS.

It’s been about a thousand years since I did a music post and this week I bought two new records so let’s, like, music video and chill.

Awesome Mix Vol. 1 by assorted people who existed circa 1970

The other day Mum and I saw that X Men/Sky advert and said ‘that tune is in Guardians of the Galaxy. Let’s watch Guardians of the Galaxy.’ Then we said ‘these tunes are the best tunes. Let’s find the soundtrack.’ For the record (ha) I will personally not rest as a screenwriter until I can write anything as good as this:

Neither of us have seen the new X Men yet, but we definitely won’t get Sky.

Blue Neighbourhood by someone who definitely did not exist in the 1970s

The other day I was in New Look and thought ‘this song about youth and partying sounds like it could be by this Troye Sivan guy I’ve heard about.’ Then I spent several days suffering through YouTube ads before cornering a guy in HMV to find Troye’s record. Lil tip: check you can spell an artist’s name before requesting the staff search them. Also, there’s a chance you couldn’t find the CD yourself because you were too short to reach the shelf and didn’t want to upset your takeaway coffee by tiptoeing.

Someone pointed out that this video is basically what Tumblr looks like:

and they ain’t wrong. My favourite songs on Blue Neighbourhood don’t have videos, but they are the same colour as my soul in the same way My Chemical Romance is the same colour as my soul. I’d forgotten what it was like to hear that sort of music for the first time so to celebrate I dyed my hair again and nearly committed to adding more metal to my head. I’m reliving my teenage years. Oh and you should watch these.

Okay I’m gonna go make my pets dinner and dance to the Piña Colada Song. 10 points to the first person to state the six degrees.