High and Dry

Thames Water. You’ve got to love the useless scum-sucking sons of bitches. Millions of gallons of water leaking out of their pipes on a daily basis and what do they do? Send out a bunch of over-fed drones to loiter around the ticket hall at Piccadilly Circus handing out little sachets with ‘Let’s beat the drought together’ stamped on the cover. (Obviously the plan is we don’t use water so they can continue to waste it).

In the summer months London Underground is such a sweatbox I always expect to find Alec Guinness sitting next to me. Rather than sort out some kind of air conditioning to alleviate the situation, LU's way of dealing with the extreme temperatures is to warn passengers to carry a bottle of water with them and get off at the next station if they feel faint/before they pass out. Which means if you can’t stand the heat; fuck right off!

Having travelled four stops from the mainline station on two lines, I took the sachet offered expecting to find a richly deserved moist towelette. It seemed the obvious thing to expect. Walking up to street level, I ripped open the packet and pulled out... a freaking tea bag!

On the back of the packet was written “Fill the kettle with just enough water to make a cuppa, saving water and the environment.” What?

Just what I needed in the midday heat, standing in the middle of central London. The tea bag came with a string, so at least women could find a use for it. But what the hell was I supposed to do with it?

Thames Water. Got to love them.

Back home I found time to read through the rest of the short film script. I’d been tetchy about the writing to begin with, but felt it deserved to be read. Although by the time I got to the last page - Page 69! - I still wasn’t sure what the hell I had just read.

I knew what it was about, but it still didn’t make sense. At 69 pages it failed as a short film. Instead, given the content, it felt like an episode of one of the useless, mumbo-jumbo, supernatural dramas that polluted the television schedules in the 1970s, usually on ITV. The sort of thing that was supposed to be spooky and creepy - and at the time probably was - but over 30 years later looks like charmless, flawed tat. The sort of thing that Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace mercilessly took the piss of a few years back.

Work Buddy mentioned that we need to sit down and decide whether to work on it. Maybe we can do something with it. But if it looks like we would simply be polishing a turd, then we might as well concentrate on our own work.

Meanwhile I am hoping to get a job in the colonial service somewhere.