Yes, it’s Moose again. Cas is off bear hunting this weekend in the wilds of Bedfordshire; I’m sure she’ll tell you all about it when she gets back. This has left me in charge of the meadow for a couple of days (the power, the power!). As she might not be back in time to dish up a roast tomorrow I thought I’d treat you to a little snack.

Boy survives two hour flight to Moscow hanging on to plane wing. It may be a cheap way to fly, but you’ve got to be pretty desparate to try it.

In London this week burning chillis sparked a terrorist alert. Is it comforting that people are so aware of terrorism that they are alert, or worrying that we live in such a climate of fear that people panic when they smell something they don’t recognise?

Spoiler alert – Don’t click on this link unless you’ve seen the film Serenity. There’s a rumour that there might be a Serenity sequel.

And finally, especially for Abi, some trailers that have caught my eye this week.
Sweeney Todd – Mmmmm, Johnny Depp. (though I was having a few technical difficulties getting it to play – not sure if that was the site or my pc)
Southland Tales – starts off normal then quickly moves into ‘what the…?’ territory.
Youth Without Youth – no, I don’t understand it either, but I’m intrigued.
Be Kind Rewind – Jack Black and Mos Def making their own versions of popular films.
No Country for Old Men – the Coen brothers. Nothing more to say.

Oh, and the title? Apparently that’s my role in the office.

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 🙂 )

Once again, I wouldn’t trouble yourselves looking for the provenance of the roast title. This one is a pure Cas-classic. We’ve been on a bit of a Battlestar Galactica binge lately at Meadow Towers – I got season 3 for my birthday, and because it had been six months since we’d last watched season 2, Moose and I decided to go back and refresh our memories before starting on the good stuff (and it is very, very good). In one of the episodes, they show the Cylon resurrection. With one model, she wakes up in a bath of goo and all her Cylon friends are around the edge, reassuring her (it turns out that being reborn is a little traumatic). And then they show the resurrection of a different model. Again, a naked woman wakes up in a bath of goo with all her Cylon friends around the edge, murmuring nice things at her, ‘telling her it will be OK’, and then camera pans back to show that this particular Cylon has been handcuffed to the sides of the bath…

Which prompted me to go “because of course, nothing says relax like handcuffs!” Moose looked at me, I looked at Moose, and we both went “Roast title!”

So there you have it.

How has this week gone? Slowly is the only word for it. It has felt like a whole week of Fridays – hard work, tiring, and never ending. Bleck. There are times I could cheerfully knock hit certain people at work upside the head with a frying pan. Grrr. But enough of that. The week has ended well with a supreme dinner party here at Meadow Towers – luckily for me, Moose is a lovely person and a damn good cook so I got a delicious birthday meal I didn’t have to do anything for other than buy the wine and cut up the bread and make the salad. And invite people. Plus I got lots of penguin goodies so all in all, this week wasn’t too bad.

I’m not sure if the non-UK readers are going to get this story, but it tickled me pink, so here it is for all you marmite loving/hating Paddington fans out there: Paddington bear still eats marmalade. The advert is sheer genius, even though it does mess with a childhood favourite.

A man was recently refused alcohol because he refused to prove he was over 21. He was 72. There really is nothing I can add to that story to make it any better.

General Sir Richard Dannatt is growing concerned about the gulf between the army and the nation in the UK. I personally have a very ambivalent attitude to the armed forces. Members of my family have served for years (my uncle is one year shy of his half century in the TAs and has served in both Iraq conflicts, Afghanistan twice, the Balkans, and sundry other conflicts) and I am intensely proud of the work they have done. On the other hand, I find violence abhorent and vehemently disagree with armed conflict of any kind. But back to the article – what got me wasn’t the stated treatment of returning soldiers at the hands of the general public. It was the quote from the general saying “we still have a nation that, at times, seems immune to homeless and psychologically-damaged soldiers”.
Surely that is more of a stunning indictment of the armed forces that they demob soldiers without the support of finding them housing or psychological support, than that the nation is at fault?

ProBlogger recently took a poll of how long people had been blogging. The results can be seen here. What I find interesting is the really sharp drop at 3-4 years. Seemingly, that’s the make/break point for serious bloggers. Survive that year and you’re set. *counts back on Bright Meadow* Um, this could be an interesting year 😉

Where do you stand on Smilies? Nils isn’t a fan. He does make a good point – they are ugly and far too prone to misinterpretation. But I am guilty of using them incessantly. I blame my early introduction to MSN. The conversations were fast and, between the group of us, we rapidly developed a shorthand that made full use of smilies. In the context of the IM, the people I was speaking to knew that when I typed o_O I was raising an eyebrow to signal my skepticism. Just as *plink* and *chocolate orange* became shorthand for certain in-jokes, a 😉 at the end of a sentence took the sting out of heavy British sarcasm and loving irreverence our American friends had troubles translating. Somehow I just never got rid of the use of smilies – they are part of my digital lexicon. I do try to be sparing with them, but even now there are people I speak to online with whom I can have entire conversations in L33T and emoticons. But just for you Nils, I try and keep them from littering Bright Meadow too much.

The XKCD comic is really tickling my fancy at the moment – I think the ones I like best are the ones like this one where I genuinely don’t get the joke till the last frame. Genius.

And on that note, I am going to nurse my not-quite-hangover and watch more BSG:3 Thank any god you care to mention that Apollo is no longer wearing that fat suit!