Ramble on.

Exciting day, firstly I was in a meeting with someone who looked like CJ Cregg (Allison Janney) everyone’s favourite press secretary. It was quiet unnerving; my "London CJ" was just as nice as the so called fictional one, very delightful.

Not more than 20 minutes later I almost bumped into Terry Gilliam. This impressed me more than it should. He is after all one of the best ever British film directors and there he was walking past Muji on Tottenham Court road. It was one of those minor coincidences as I had just been looking at a box set of his films. Obviously if this was a true coincidence he would have just been reading my blog!

Lastly just watched an enjoyable programme, “Wainwright walks” on BBC4. It’s just a programme about walking in the lakes, but like most programmes I like more and more, it is just of its self, no side, no angle. The only celebrity is Wainwright, who although a million selling author was a town treasurer and curmudgeon for most his life.
The programme features Watchdog’s Julia Bradbury, who is a good choice, being friendly and personable but also seemingly new to hill walking and so has a nice everywoman touch. The true star of the show as they always say is the scenery, The Lakeland fells always look good but this show was really shot well. You just wanted to be sat next to Sprinkling tarn or be just setting out across the heather to tackle another summit.
My only gripes are that there where too many establishing shots of Julia, we would see her walking up hill then cut to her walking toward the camera etc. They just look set up and the process of filming gets in the way. There was one long shot where you just thought did they all have to wait whilst the camera man schlepped to the other side of the valley or was the peace of the lakes ruined by “wup wup” of a BBC chopper.
One last thing, I don’t know if it’s just Julia’s background or I have been mispronouncing it all these years but all the way through tonight’s show she referred to Scafell Pike, but said it more like Scawfell pike instead of Scarfell pike. It just sounded weird; I can never fully come to terms with these southerners and their long vowels. But anyway vowel complaints aside the programme did make me want to get my mental kink cake out and head for the hills.