Christmas List

The old dear called to tell me which nights she wouldn’t call to see how things are coming along. Go figure.

Reeling off the list of bowls and croquet club parties, local theatre parties, and lunches with ladies who lunch, it seemed more like a gentler reminder that their social life in the Westcountry leaves mine in the dust.

I had the drinks last week and that was it. But at least it was with people I liked. Which made a change from what I was used to with the studio parties. The year I joined we all went off go-karting for the afternoon, which was great. Since then the annual Christmas do came down to mediocre meals in expensive restaurants with everyone, rather boringly, on their best behaviour.

My evening of spreading Christmas cheer done with, today I got around to sending off the cards. In the next couple of days or so I need to head into London and pick myself up a present. It won’t be a surprise, obviously, but at least it’ll be something I want.

Now all that’s left is to decide what work needs to be done in the holiday period’s downtime:

Finalise the series bible to go with the written spec pilot

That’s really the big one and there are a lot of ideas that Work Buddy and I need to nail down and finish structuring. There’s also the script of the second episode that needs to be finished off.

Teach myself Flash for an upcoming short I’m animating

Luckily the designs mean that lip sync doesn’t enter the equation, which is a good thing. Making things move is easy, getting the timing right and bringing the characters to life is the thing.

List all the sources for the facts in the pharma document

They should have been listed while I was producing the material but in the end there wasn’t the time. If I don’t do it now it’ll be a nightmarish last-minute rush.

There’s always more but pile on too much and nothing will get done to satisfaction. So there’ll be notebooks and paper lying around to scribble in. And I need to tidy up the desk while I’m at it.

Write a treatment for the Gumball 3000 feature film

I’ve never been a great one for scriptwriting competitions. Rather, I’d prefer to write my own material to actually sell. I didn’t pay much attention to the Gumball’s call for entrants. It was only on the day of the deadline that I lifted a page from an existing script and sent it off with the CV. A week later I heard I was one of the 100 people invited to advance to the treatment stage.

In between I’ll catch up with some TV. I missed the opening episodes of The Story of Light Entertainment documentary series the first time around. Over the holiday the eight episodes are being repeated.

I’ve heard very good things about the BBC adaptation of Philip Pullman’s The Ruby in the Smoke, which was previewed at the NFT earlier in the month. And of course there are the typical festive entertainments. On Christmas Eve, for instance, ITV1 is showing... Van Helsing?

Surely some mistake.