almost witty

Ever since I was a wee nipper, Christmas Day always started at 2pm (our family were always late risers…) when Top of The Pops was on BBC One, Christmas Day. We’d emerge from our respective bedrooms, and open our presents to the latest bangin’ tunes of 1987, with occasional home camera footage. Which is quite scary twenty years on.

Fortunately, while we’ve ditched the self-filming thing, opening our presents to the tune of Top of The Pops is something we still do now on the odd times we do get together at Christmas - much to the bemusement of the strangers from the outside.

And now the BBC have cancelled Christmas Top Of The Pops. Bah, harumph and all that. We’ve cancelled Christmas in protest.

Despite having spent most of my life writing words for websites (and project proposals, that sort of thing), and having had two jobs with the word “Editor” in the title, I’ve never really considered myself a writer.

Recently, I was asked to write a short article for Ariel, the BBC’s internal corporate newspaper. On a topic I knew a lot about, indeed, that I somewhat relished.

However, I kept putting it off week after week until finally, today, I was told that I had to get it to the editor by lunchtime or knives and screams would be heard. So I knuckled down, looked at the few notes I’d made, and in an hour, I’d turned out 425 words of prose that’s almost professional. It’s elegant, the end references the beginning, and it’s one of the best articles I think I’ve written. And I knocked it out in less than an hour.

I’d whip myself even more about being such a procrastinating fool about it, but it seems I’m not that alone. Douglas Adams famously declared that “I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.” Most of the emails that Russell T Davies sends out in The Writer’s Tale are of him either avoiding starting work on a script, procrastinating over working on a script, or the insane things that happen as he tries to finish his work to deadline.

What is it about writing that encourages procrastination to such an extent? How is it I can quickly knock off a blog entry, no problem, but trying to write an article causes huge amounts of internal angst? How come editors don’t want to strangle their contributors at every available opportunity? And how can I stop procrastination in the unlikely event I ever get asked to write another article?

I may be tired, slightly irritable (well, you try having your parents stay for a week and you sleeping in the living room on the sofa with one of their friends) but for some reason, I can’t stop dwelling on the notion that Barrack Obama may have won the Democratic nomination.

Simply because I cannot believe
- a nation that managed to vote for Dubya *twice*, is ever going to elect Obama as President. Which basically means the most powerful man in the world could well end up being a 73-year-old military veteran. Which is not good news.
- which basically means the Democrats have basically handed over the Presidency to yet another warmonger. Obama may be the right candidate, but he’s not going to be the one who wins
- surely everyone who’s voted in the primaries is already a Democrat nominee. So why is the UK press so keen on splashing the fact that members of a foreign political party have chosen their next presidential candidate …
- what on earth does Obama stand for? What are his policies? I am reminded of the character in a Stephen King novel who came to power vaguely promising great change, and then promptly starting a war… (then again, I guess the same can be said for Clinton. All political rhetoric and inspirational self-selling speeches as opposed to policies)
-why am I more interested in US domestic politics than UK domestic politics (again!)?

More importantly, thanks to my sister getting married, I seem to have missed the chance to be part of the last Circle Line pub crawl on the London Underground. and more importantly, the chance to cameo on the Daily Show.

So… yet again another potentially life-changing question, after someone has unexpectedly graciously offered me another job. Do I go for:

Nottingham - six-month lucrative contract, possibility of permanent. The money involved is obscene, and would be enough for me to do a Masters’, but the work itself sounds relatively dull, and it’s a continuation of the dual-city thing which has run me a tad ragged lately.

London - eleven-month contract at my old haunt but at a higher grade, with the possibility of extension for another year and who knows after that? The money offered is nearly equivalent, although that’d be over eleven months as opposed to six months with the Nottingham job, so I doubt I’d build up enough savings to do a said Masters. But then London offers stability, a chance to sit still for eleven months and try to build a life. Oh, and listen to Virgin Radio in glorious FM, now I’ve become a late-night addict to The Geoff Show.

Just to throw another spanner into the works, I’ve got two more job interviews tomorrow - one with possibly the best TV channel in the world…