Picture from The Bottom Wiki
After my marathon sleep yesterday I was up rather early this morning, and although I could have done anything I wanted to, I chose instead to do very little. Mandi had volunteered to go into work for a few hours (rather than the standard double time that everyone gets for Sunday work, she gets double and then some, I can't remember if it is double time and a half or something like that) which gave me the peace and quiet to enjoy being ill. I took Jack for a walk and then made myself some breakfast, had a shower to help me feel better, and did the laundry. Apart from that I had a very enjoyable day doing nothing.
I went to bed before Mandi last night and she didn't change the clocks so she was late for work, not that it matters on Sunday overtime of course but she did feel a bit of a buffoon. Clock change day is confusing enough for the nation as a whole without waking up with the clocks wrong. I don't feel as if I lost an hour of sleep because I was so well rested, but then again I doubt anyone ever really feels deprived of an hour in bed seeing as the clocks change happens on a Sunday when getting out of bed is optional. The time on my phone couldn't be changed, which I was surprised at considering that a smart phone should really do it automatically. In the end I had to go through all the different international time zones and find one that matched British Summer Time, so my phone now presumably thinks we are in West Africa. Being up early and having nothing to do felt like such a luxury, especially when I checked the time and realised that in 'real life' it was actually an hour earlier.
The box set of Bottom got another good dent made in it today, I am now on the second series and it's interesting to see how it became more of an ensemble peice (the characters Spudgun and Hedgehog became more of a fixture in the second series which slightly altered the dynamic between Ritchie and Eddie). As for special guests, one particular episode, Parade, saw Julia Sawalha, Robert Llewellyn, Carry On actress Patsy Rowlands, and Chris Langham. A good supporting cast for a sitcom but it feels strange seeing Langham in anything these days. He was one of the original cast of Not The Nine O'Clock News, a writer for Spike Milligan and on The Muppet Show, and for many years a 'nearly' star until his roles in Help and as one of the original cast members of The Thick of It made him a household name after thirty years on the sidelines. Just as awards and accolades were about to be thrown at him, he was arrested by Operation Ore for downloading and possessing child pornography and imprisoned after a trial. Aside from a few small parts he has not worked since and received the same airbrushing that all sex crime celebrities do, apart from one which is something I find strange. Langham was cleared of the accusations of sexual assault and had to sign the Sex Offenders Register because of the porn offence, despite his protestations that he did it purely for research and to make sense of his own childhood abuse. I am not saying we should put offences involving children into a grading system, nor am I calling for Langham's forgiveness, but Pete Townsend carries on with his career and has never been called to account for committing the same crime for the same reason/excuse. Is it fair that there seems to be different rules for different people?
Due to illness there is no edition of The Sunday Alternative this week.
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March housekeeping
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