Yet More on the F***ing Fulfords
Let me warn you before I start, I got some jet lag going on here, and I may just blither. I'll try for, you know, like writing technique and all, but I make No Promises.
I'm home, and I'm glad to be home -- we're closing on Bear's Retreat on Thursday, though we probably won't be moving in until sometime in August (those of you who are regular readers will remember that we weren't LOOKING for a house, it reached out and grabbed us; we weren't packing boxes or refraining from making summer travel plans or anything).
But there is a sad thing about not being in England, and that is that on Wednesday night I will be missing yet another show concerning the Fulfords, who have apparently turned to media prostitution in their (literally) noble fight to keep together their inherited property without getting the British taxpayers to do it.
So, besides allowing Channel 4 to make a "Cutting Edge" documentary about them, which I have discussed earlier, they are also having a guest stint on one of my favorite English TV shows, "How Clean is Your House?"
"How Clean is Your House?" is one of the scariest shows ever invented, if you are me. In this show, a pair of quite outspoken and fearless ladies descend on some poor slob's house, and go through it having fits -- all televised for your viewing enjoyment -- and doing things like taking swabs of the kitchen garbage bin to determine the germ content. Then they meet with the poor slob, and rant at him or her for a while (everybody I've ever seen on the show so far could be DEAD already from the germs in the kitchen garbage bin; that nobody's actually dies from it seems to me to be odd), and then they show them how to fix things up, and hordes of helpful people descend on the house and clean it. Later, the ladies show up, a few months later, I think, to see if the poor slob has managed to change his or her lifestyle.
After I see this show -- which I enjoy greatly, in much the same way that I enjoy Hellraiser -- I generally take a couple of swipes at the kitchen garbage bin, though not much more than that. The show hasn't made me change my ways, alas. Indeed, I'm always chuffed that I'm not as messy as the people the show has chosen to torment. No problem here. Just don't go near the garbage.
Well.
On Wednesday night, the cleaning ladies are going to be shown taking on the Fulfords. We're talking 50 rooms of dog turds and dead bats, here. And I'm missing it. I grieve, and I grieve mightily. The ladies are going to be having major fits. Screaming fits, in the case of the dead bat. Also, the commercials show them opening up a chest which appears to me to be full of filthy medieval and Tudor documents. And I'm missing it.
Life goes on, though, and Lord knows I've got stuff to do here. Those of you who can get Channel 4 where you are should definitely watch that show, though, and tell me all about it.
Huntingdon was lovely -- I stayed in a wonderful B&B which was the jail in the 19th century -- they put me in the Chaplain's Room, which was an excellent choice; I especially appreciated the cross on the door. I might have liked being in the Punishment Cell, though. Somebody else got that. He says it's his favorite room.
Well, let's not go there.
I finished up my work -- there's another missing manuscript, but I've got an archivist on it (most archivists do NOT want to be told that "there's no problem; I'll just explain in the book that this manuscript has gone missing" -- no, no, they get in gear) -- and the Russian Mob stole my laptop at Victoria Station*, but I'm home, and I've got the manuscript on my jumpdrive, which was in my purse and not in the laptop case, so all's well.**
****************************
*At least, that's what the British Transit Police told me the minute I got hold of them. "Hi, my laptop got stolen at Victoria Station." "Ah, yes, that will be the Russian Mob. They've got a laptop scheme going right now. We're planning an undercover operation for this week. So sorry." I like this. I mean, for all I know, some unaffiliated hooligan -- are they yobs if they're not drunk at the moment? Not sure, here -- stole my laptop; what do I know; my eye was off it at the moment; that would be the problem -- but I like thinking it was the Russian Mob. Cause first of all, it's a good story (indeed, after Sam discovered I was fine, and the manuscript was still extant, what DID he say? Well, this will be great for the blog! Thank you! Just what I thought. Then he mentioned that it was nice of the Russians to lighten my luggage, there at the end of my trip), and second of all, I have watched many "Law and Order" shows and clones, and I'm very clear as to How Much Worse Things Could Be. So if losing my laptop is all that happens to me, hey. I'm down with that.
**After I lost the laptop, and was on the plane, I came across, in the crime novel I was reading, the line, "Geeks always have backups." Well, I'm not a techno-geek, but I am a retro-geek. I had backups.
I'm home, and I'm glad to be home -- we're closing on Bear's Retreat on Thursday, though we probably won't be moving in until sometime in August (those of you who are regular readers will remember that we weren't LOOKING for a house, it reached out and grabbed us; we weren't packing boxes or refraining from making summer travel plans or anything).
But there is a sad thing about not being in England, and that is that on Wednesday night I will be missing yet another show concerning the Fulfords, who have apparently turned to media prostitution in their (literally) noble fight to keep together their inherited property without getting the British taxpayers to do it.
So, besides allowing Channel 4 to make a "Cutting Edge" documentary about them, which I have discussed earlier, they are also having a guest stint on one of my favorite English TV shows, "How Clean is Your House?"
"How Clean is Your House?" is one of the scariest shows ever invented, if you are me. In this show, a pair of quite outspoken and fearless ladies descend on some poor slob's house, and go through it having fits -- all televised for your viewing enjoyment -- and doing things like taking swabs of the kitchen garbage bin to determine the germ content. Then they meet with the poor slob, and rant at him or her for a while (everybody I've ever seen on the show so far could be DEAD already from the germs in the kitchen garbage bin; that nobody's actually dies from it seems to me to be odd), and then they show them how to fix things up, and hordes of helpful people descend on the house and clean it. Later, the ladies show up, a few months later, I think, to see if the poor slob has managed to change his or her lifestyle.
After I see this show -- which I enjoy greatly, in much the same way that I enjoy Hellraiser -- I generally take a couple of swipes at the kitchen garbage bin, though not much more than that. The show hasn't made me change my ways, alas. Indeed, I'm always chuffed that I'm not as messy as the people the show has chosen to torment. No problem here. Just don't go near the garbage.
Well.
On Wednesday night, the cleaning ladies are going to be shown taking on the Fulfords. We're talking 50 rooms of dog turds and dead bats, here. And I'm missing it. I grieve, and I grieve mightily. The ladies are going to be having major fits. Screaming fits, in the case of the dead bat. Also, the commercials show them opening up a chest which appears to me to be full of filthy medieval and Tudor documents. And I'm missing it.
Life goes on, though, and Lord knows I've got stuff to do here. Those of you who can get Channel 4 where you are should definitely watch that show, though, and tell me all about it.
Huntingdon was lovely -- I stayed in a wonderful B&B which was the jail in the 19th century -- they put me in the Chaplain's Room, which was an excellent choice; I especially appreciated the cross on the door. I might have liked being in the Punishment Cell, though. Somebody else got that. He says it's his favorite room.
Well, let's not go there.
I finished up my work -- there's another missing manuscript, but I've got an archivist on it (most archivists do NOT want to be told that "there's no problem; I'll just explain in the book that this manuscript has gone missing" -- no, no, they get in gear) -- and the Russian Mob stole my laptop at Victoria Station*, but I'm home, and I've got the manuscript on my jumpdrive, which was in my purse and not in the laptop case, so all's well.**
****************************
*At least, that's what the British Transit Police told me the minute I got hold of them. "Hi, my laptop got stolen at Victoria Station." "Ah, yes, that will be the Russian Mob. They've got a laptop scheme going right now. We're planning an undercover operation for this week. So sorry." I like this. I mean, for all I know, some unaffiliated hooligan -- are they yobs if they're not drunk at the moment? Not sure, here -- stole my laptop; what do I know; my eye was off it at the moment; that would be the problem -- but I like thinking it was the Russian Mob. Cause first of all, it's a good story (indeed, after Sam discovered I was fine, and the manuscript was still extant, what DID he say? Well, this will be great for the blog! Thank you! Just what I thought. Then he mentioned that it was nice of the Russians to lighten my luggage, there at the end of my trip), and second of all, I have watched many "Law and Order" shows and clones, and I'm very clear as to How Much Worse Things Could Be. So if losing my laptop is all that happens to me, hey. I'm down with that.
**After I lost the laptop, and was on the plane, I came across, in the crime novel I was reading, the line, "Geeks always have backups." Well, I'm not a techno-geek, but I am a retro-geek. I had backups.
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