So I’ve just spent 15 minutes writing a post to explain why I won’t be writing a Roast this weekend and all of a sudden I find myself writing a Roast. Indecisiveness, your name is Cas.

Why wasn’t I going to write a Roast this week? Because they take a long time to write and require more than a fair bit of mental energy and humour, neither of which I exactly have in abundance after this past week. Why has it been a shitty, evil, nasty weird week? It just has. I’ve been feeling down for a couple of reasons that are too long and depressing to go into at the moment, and then some other nasty personal shit dropped on my head from a high height on Monday evening and… I’m sure I will tell you all about it some day but right now I can only just skate over the surface of it before bursting into tears (as my boss will testify after an unadvised “Cas, are you OK?” comment on Tuesday). I want to be able to write it out because that’s my outlet, however as it stands it’s all still too fresh and… *struggles for the word* Ughy to really even contemplate going in to.

So why have I decided to write the Roast after all if all of the above still stands true (and it does)? Well, for a couple of reasons. I’ve said it before and no doubt I’ll say it again, but I like having people read Bright Meadow and comment. It’s got to the point that people come to the site expressly for the Sunday Roasts and they get disappointed/annoyed with me if they don’t find one, and I can’t cope with any more people being disappointed/annoyed with me right now. Then of course there is the fact that my writing mojo has recently taking an inexplicable detour and is currently leaning more to non-blog stuff – at least with regular Sunday Roasts there’s still content for y’all to read any my slightly more erratic post schedule maintains some structure.

And lastly there’s the fact that I keep finding this stuff I want to tell people about!

So I sit here at the dining room table on a Sunday afternoon, armed with a pot of Assam tea and a list of links as long as a very short person’s arm, and I write the Roast. By sticking to the routine I shall make my way through this, evil step-grandparents be damned! It’s that or dive into another bottle of mediocre rose and I’ve drunk more than enough this week thank you very much!

A new study shows that too little sleep doubles the risk of heart disease. It also says that too much sleep isn’t good for you but I shall choose to ignore that. I normally get around seven hours a night during the week. The fact that I then habitually dormouse my way through the weekend is irrelevant, or rather more to do with my history of ME and the fact I genuinely need more sleep if I’m to keep functioning. But anyway – science has proven that your mother was right: the best medicine is a good nights sleep 😛

I love it when Micro$oft makes a frack up on this scale.

Who’d have thunk that an Eastenders actress could actually act? But it turns out this one can (at least now she’s no longer in Eastenders). I will admit to looking forward to this when it comes to the UK next year – if only because David Eick is behind it and we’ve got so totally hooked on BSG that Moose and myself nearly had a nock-down, drag-out brawl over the ending of Season 3 last night. Well, our voices got a little raised at any rate 😉

The Tories want responsibility for out-of-hours GP services transfered back to GPs. I’m in a conflict about this as a shit GP-controlled out-of-hours service landed me in hospital strung out on morphine, whilst a shit PCT-controlled out-of-hours service landed me in hospital strung out on morphine…

For my mum – a daring Bear rescue

I’ve loved, adored and worshipped Stephen Fry since the days of Jeeves & Wooster. Not only is the man insanely funny (if you haven’t watched QI yet, do so), he is fiendishly intelligent and… well, didn’t I pretty much cover it with ‘loved, adored and worshipped’? So it gives me more than a little pleasure to introduce his blog.

Another thing I’ve long been a fan of is Terry Pratchett. I can’t remember when I first got my mitts on a book, but I think I have Tim DeCamp, Edgarley School and a debate team where the topic was ‘dragons’ to thank… So I’ve read all the books cover to cover more than is probably healthy. I have my favourite characters and stories but I am always at something of a loss with where to start people off if they are new to the books (because, all agree, “Colour of Magic” and “Light Fantastic” aren’t the best of the bunch). So here’s a handy reading guide to the collection.

Abi told me off the other week for not including enough movie trailers. Sorry Abi 🙁 Because I dare not incur the wrath again,
Atonement – I’ve seen this and it is damn good with a glorious sound track, beautiful cinematography, and amazing acting. If you haven’t seen it already, do so. Now.
Grace is Gone – John Cusack. Need I say more?

And with that done for another week, I am going to curl up and watch some Black Adder to cheer myself up. Followed by some SG:1 Season 4. And maybe even a fairy cake. Mmmm, fairy cakes… (Worry not, all isn’t actually as bad as the first half of this post makes out. I’m just drama-queening it because it’s nice to moan occasionally. I’m not going to jump off a bridge or anything, just feel a little sorry for myself 🙂 )