Deliberately vague stuff about meetings.

Some meetings, I think they just want you to come in so they can check you don't have two heads and carry round a picture of Hitler. And the meetings themselves can be very odd affairs, when the conversation you had seems to bear absolutely no relation to the outcome.

You can have quite a grumpy five-minute meeting that seems to go quite badly (I have had meetings where the executive has looked at me in exactly the same way you would look at a man who has turned up with a live squid in his mouth), and come out of it with your own office and Zooey Deschenielellel's phone number. And you can have nice fluffy chats in which you seem to get on fine, but then leave the building to the oddly specific sound of Locks Being Changed.

Anyway, in one of the meetings Friday, I got to say 'Well, I think the script could work without the Frost Giants or the Nordic Gods making a direct appearance, but I'm drawing a line at the Trolls'. Which is something everyone should say at a meeting at some point. This wasn't the BBC, this was a different meeting, set up at the last minute, and it seemed to go quite well, but obviously you never really know. The best thing was, in the time since they'd read the first script, I'd gone on to write a second, making me look like a Veritable Powerhouse of Story. Also, on the way up the stairs to the meeting, I met the guy who'd had the meeting before me. He looked at me dolefully with his second head, and I noticed that in his left hand he clutched a slightly grubby picture of Hitler. So I'm cautiously optimistic about my chances.

The third meeting was really more 'drinking outside', which was fun, particularly when a group of figures in black paramilitary garb started abseiling down a nearby balcony. After a moment, the gesticulations and an amusing 'tangle in the rope which involved showing of pants' it became apparent these were in fact French mimes, at which point everyone got really scared.


Random catch-up of things:

This Family Guy clip is already halfway round the internet, but it's well worth checking out if you haven't yet seen it - particularly as the show isn't usually known for the finesse of its animation.

Listen again to the Bearded Ladies (or hear them fresh Tuesday 6.30, Radio Four). I particularly like Fay's 'charwoman' sort of voice (she uses it in the car buying sketch), which makes me laugh enough that I need a second go to hear what she's actually saying. Although Ori is also excellent in everything she does, obviously. It's just a shame that the radio doesn't let you see her Eye-Narrowing, which she does very well. Ori may actually be the best Eye-Narrower in the business.

Tracy sent me this link to a Young Knives video, which she thought I might like, as it had a good dancy bit in the middle. It does, and I do. Not quite to OK Go standards, but I like videos shot in fields that were quite possibly owned by a friend of one of the singer's dads.

And Pashmina does a nice (in the conventional and Elizabethan sense, mhah) review of the new Pride and Prejudice film, which reminded me very loosely of a recent cartoon of a woman in a bonnet sitting in the office of a Regency-era literary editor, who says 'it's a lovely story Miss Austen, but all this effing and blinding will have to go....'


Also, accomodation this weekend was courtesy of the Mighty Evans, who also cooked a mean Morrocan Chicken Friday night, for which many thanks. I repaid her by waking her up at 7.30 Sunday morning by banging on the door very loudly and shouting 'I've woken up really early, so I'm going now!' for which, apologies.