2006 — Day 22 - Triffids (and chocks) away!
John Wyndham1 said in an interview in 1968 that the idea for his terrifying ambulatory vegetables came to him when he saw some raspberry canes moving silhouetted against the night sky. There's an interesting (to me!) discussion of the visual appearance of these veggies on the Penguin paperback in Steve Hare's 1995 Penguin Portrait. When I first read the tale, back in 1963, I needed (but didn't have) glasses. Thus practically everything seemed (to me!) to move sinisterly one way or another. The 1962 film was (of course) a travesty, though I couldn't persuade my parents to take me to an "X" certificate film at age 11 in any case. But, somehow, I had missed the fact that in 1968 BBC radio transmitted a six-part adaptation dramatised by Giles Cooper until today. Well, actually, yesterday now — when, on that traditional Friday afternoon visit to Southampton, I found a 3CD set of the broadcast, complete with deleted scenes.
Of course, whether I will be brave enough to listen to it...
Chocks? — what's he on about now? Well, partial success on the Roku network player front. There's an Open Source "FireFly" server that I'm half persuaded may yet do the magic. It's scanned all my MP3s, at least. Meanwhile, the Roku is busily serving BBC 6music downstairs via my wireless network. But I've not yet managed to persuade it to find all those MP3s on the PC upstairs.
Fopp is becoming a must. The new DVDs (yesterday) were
- Betty Boop - the ultimate collection (who could resist Ms Boop?)
- The Crying Game (to go with last week's BFI booklet)
- David Byrne (at Union Chapel, London)
- Sliver (a typical Joe Eszterhas2 script)
And, on the grumpy front, I now have Bling Blogs and Bluetooth aka "Modern Living for Oldies" which seems to be a well-written series of columns or articles from Richard Ingrams' Oldie magazine.
PC World record
I didn't buy anything in the new Southampton store that's opened today, but I did get approached, nine times, by would-be helpful sales staff. Whether this was opening day nerves, over-enthusiastic commission-hunting, or the fact that I doubtless look like a befuddled technophobe... I found myself drawn back to the (tiny) Mac display, and the Mac Tiny. Watch this space. (I love the Mac v PC ads, by the way.)
Tip of the Hat
To Dave S: we thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to catch up on all that wonderful legalistic material from Boston!