Dreamquest of Unknown Numpty

Well done Danny Stack (he's not the numpty by the way), whose short film 'On The Death Of His Wife' has been selected as short of the week on the C4 film website.

I love all this DIY stuff - a few years ago, the standard advice for young comedy writers was 'write some stuff for radio'. At the time, they were talking about Weekending, only I hated it, so I didn't bother. Nowadays, I think you'd be better off making your own stuff and podcasting it - which will lead to an astonishing amount of ghastliness, obviously, but I like to think the good stuff will shine forth from the dungheap. But then I am inclined to positive thinking to the point of imbecility, so again, who knows?

It's gems like that I'll be sharing with the Pro. Writing group later today. Maybe I should charge an entrance fee or something.

Falmouth is currently plastered with home made posters for lost animals. Currently missing: an albino ferret and a parrot. I like to think they've teamed up to fight crime, but who knows? A couple of days ago I saw a poster for a found blue persian cat, which reminded me of why I attach such significance to blue cats in the first place...

Cornwall still has a number of residual rituals from the old Celtic tribal system. One of these is that on a boy's thirteenth birthday, he is sent into the corner of the playing field where the gypsies once killed a child*. Wearing shorts and a Supertramp T-shirt**, my bare legs were whipped with nettles, and I was forced to drink Cripplecock cider until I fell to the ground, foaming at the mouth, pupils like whirling supernovae.

Traditionally, at this point, one's totem animal would appear. Ben Fisher had seen a dolphin. Daniel 'Gibbon' had seen a... well, enough said. David Eddy saw a pair of rather elegant wolfhounds, annoyingly. I however, saw an animated blue cat. Not the one from the Magic Roundabout film (the old one), as I've never seen it, but a bit like it only different. It winked at me, whispered 'when applicable, upgrade to OS Tiger - the Spotlight app is well worth the eighty quid alone' and then vanished.

Nice to see a poster for a found animal though - usually the other way around. Then, a couple of days later I saw a poster for a 'lost' blue persian cat, just round the corner from the 'found' cat poster.

Which reminded me of why I attach such significance to blue cats in the first place. Cornwall still has a number of residual rituals... wait, I've done that bit.

Basically, about a minute later I did a classic comedy double take and called the number on the poster, giving the owner directions as to where said pet could be found. And above me, I felt my totem spirit smile. In a catty sort of way.

It was right about the Spotlight thing though - sometimes it finds the bit you're looking for before you've even finished typing the word. Marvellous.

Just thought I'd better get all this out of my system now.





*Obviously they didn't really. In fact no gypsies ever came that far south-west, so at school we barely had an idea of what gypsies actually were. Popular opinion had it that they were a strange alien race, made up of whirling gears and strange lights, who set fire to bushes and took off their faces to reveal a lizard underneath. But then we might have mixed up Religious Education class with late night repeats of V. Regardless, I suspect all schools in the UK have a corner where 'gypsies killed a child'.

** Model's own, sadly. And just after I remembered this, I saw an ad for a Best Of Supertramp CD. How strange. But somehow... logical.