Le Voyage de Penelope

I am supposed to be writing a research report. This is partly..... this is entirely my own fault since I volunteered the idea myself. Nonetheless, come on. Who in their right mind would actually want to write about the marketing opportunities afforded by online data provision companies?

Exactly.

So, what did I do over the Bank Holiday weekend? Glad you asked. Firstly, I had a really really really painful throat. It still hurts a fair bit. I dosed myself with painkillers -- ibuprofen, in fact, on Paul's advice. he had some very well thought-out reasons why ibuprofen should be the drug of choice and, fair play to the man, it worked. Trouble is, it would start to wear off a bit in the latter stages of any one dose (and you're not meant to take too much). Crashing on....

On Saturday morning, Paul and I watched Conan the Barbarian. Henry was also around, but was meant ot be writing essays, so didn't get involved in the shenanigans and goings-on that were shortly to occur.

Post-Conan, it was realised that when Adam came back from up north on Monday afternoon, he'd make some sarky comment about us doing nothing all weekend, and possibly smirk. this could not be allowed to happen. and what better way to achieve something in 48 hours than to create a trip-hop chart-topper and its accompanying urban cool video?

This necessitated a good eight hours solid on Paul's very expensive music software, first of all. Having knackered myself out by 1 a.m. (ibuprofen, remember?), I retired to my chambers. the next morning after church, I returned to the house to collect Paul and the camera.

We set off to get slightly cool but melancholy transport/walking around London footage. It took about three buses before we could get an upstairs window seat, but we eventually bagged some good stuff going over westminster Bridge and around Parliament Square. Also a very fortuitous bit of timing on Whitehall came in handy.

Anyone pointing out that "slightly cool but melancholy...London footage" makes up a sizable proportion of raison d'etre a) is right and b) can fuck right off. You try coming up with something more inventive than that in under three hours, you decadent philistines.

Anyway, after that (and a moment of weakness in HMV in Covent Garden leading to me now owning every episode of Spaced on DVD) we went back and logged the footage onto my computer. Then followed a good ten hours of editing, including a bit I rather like, where we sped up some tube footage just enough so that the objects on the tunnel wall go past in synchronisation with the beat. It's just like a Michel Gondry video! But cheaper! And much less good!

We decided to abandon a subplot that had Paul's character meeting a Lego person in Trafalgar Square, because we didn't have any Lego. And have you seen the price of Lego these days?

We were really keen to get the finished video DVD-encoded so that we could show it to all and sundry on the big screen and in surround-sound in the lounge, but it wasn't to be. Still, mission accomplished.

Then on Monday we watched Spaced. All of it.