I can't do this

Dear all,

Well I mean to say, wow. Look at you all, blogging away like there's no tomorrow. How very proud of you I am. I'm aware that this challenge was open to all, and much as I would love to accept, I really can't. That's not to say I'm resigning from contributing, far from it. I would love to contribute far more than I already do and have several ideas.

What I lack, is time. I moved on to a daily paper five months ago. While I still lived an hour away from work in the car, this was problematic in itself. Last week I moved house and now seem to be working an insane amount of nights, though I do now have internet after 10 days without.

Currently, my inspiration is job-related and I can't say anything because I'm covering a murder trial and have to be careful not to write anything, anywhere, that would create a substantial risk of serious prejudice to that trial, as defined by the Contempt of Court Act. That's not to say that I would, either here or in print, but I think I'll feel more relaxed generally, if I know there's nothing written outside of work that's going to leave me with cause for concern by its mere existence.

But mostly, my problem is that because I write for a living, it's not something I'm hugely fond of doing as a leisure activity. After making words line up in a coherent, and hopefully interesting, order all day, it's not really what I like to do with my free time. And I find that while I plan blog posts in my head during the day, I get home and they've drifted out of my brain and I can never quite recapture the same elegant turns of phrase I had so carefully thought up earlier.

So I'm afraid I shall have to decline the challenge, Thanks, but no thanks. I shall certainly try and contribute more in future, but I'm wary of setting any yardstick because my job is rather unpredictable and I would almost inevitably fail to meet it. Which would make me sad and demoralised. And no one wants that.

And to anyone who may accuse me of wussing out, I will extend a middle digit in their general direction with this imperative attached: "Swivel."

I have a whole day of shorthand to transcribe. I thank you.

How to reduce Han to incoherent squeeeeeeeing

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Trailers for Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.

Not to put to fine a point on it, but Oh. My. Fuck. Watch them full screen. It's fan-bloody-franken-tastic.

It's hard to explain how much these books mean to me. It's not so much the quality of the writing or the plots, both of which went seriously downhill after book four, but the completeness of the universe that JK Rowling created. During some of my lowest points during my growing up, this series gave me somewhere else to go. It was also what introduced me to the concept of online fandom and online interactivity as a whole. For three years or more, I co-wrote online stories on fan forums with sometimes as many as ten other people set in the Harry Potter universe. HP remains the only cultural marker I have ever written fanfic for. And no, it wasn't slash. My friends and I never played the characters in the books, but Hogwarts and its environs was our primary setting and through that writing I found long-lasting and wonderful friendship. I am still in touch with a good few of those people on a regular basis. The majority of our interaction is online, but the beauty of this kind of friendship is that you can always pick it up wherever you last left off.

The films were never as good as they could have been, I think the weight of expectation was always too great and as with the editors of the books, sometimes people just didn't know when to say no to those involved. However, aside from Chamber of Secrets, I don't think they have been truly awful. I certainly appreciated the pick up in pace for Prisoner of Azkaban. I enjoyed Goblet of Fire and have to say I can't remember Order of the Phoenix at all, though I did go and see it in the cinema. I may have to find and re-watch it before July 15. The adaptations always suffer from a lack of plot exposition and over-egging of the action in the final pudding, but I still enjoy them because they are a glorious realisation of a universe that has supported, sustained and encouraged me. Not only do they look fantastic as films, I also love the music which I think is just perfect. And whenever I go to see the films, I'm always carrying the memories of the books into the cinema with me which helps make up any deficiencies.

I think Philip Pullman is an infinitely superior writer to JK Rowling, Narnia will always be my first love, along with the Willard Price "Adventure" books and Enid Blyton boarding school stories, I think Hogwarts as an idea owed a helluva lot to Jill Murphy's The Worst Witch which I read when much younger, but I will always retain a special affection for HP. Now the books have ended, the films are something of a nostalgia fest for me, because my life has moved on in so many ways since that period when every new HP book was cause for serious excitement. On July 15, you know where you'll find me.

EDIT: Just been messing about on IMDB and discovered they are making Deathly Hallows in two parts. Talk about a money spinner. Part of me is delighted by this, but the rest of me feels we could well be in for epic fail.