The trouble with Freeview is that there are too many channels. I missed the first 5 mins of Torchwood because I thought it was on BBC4 - The Avengers is on BBC4 so it seems reasonable that Torchwood is too. I had to message dad to ask where it was. And then get him to tell me what happened at the start, but by the sounds of it I didn't miss much.

And the announcer lied at the end, Declassified isn't on the website yet.

I keep forgetting to say that I've posted the latest chapter to my prebaby fic: Doctor Who: The Soap Opera, Chapter 2: Doing the Deed, in which Sarah dithers about whether to go through with the abortion and Harry is no help at all.

My pico project is now at 1359 words, which is pretty good, and my SG ficathon is on draft 2. It's 2000 words and not likely to go longer than that. It doesn't help that the characters don't want to do what I want them to. I'm also trying to discover how risque I can go. At the moment it might just about be PG-13, so we'll see.

I forgot to say that yesterday I popped into the charity shop and found someone has obviously been getting rid of their Chalet School books because another 50p got me two books, each of which are two books in one. So once I've read all the ones I have sitting around here I'll have read the first fourteen. And I think Joey will have left by then, which is quite weird to think about.

If you're reading this in LJ you'll see I have a new default icon of Spooks, which fileg made for me. After this one's been aired a bit I'll change my default to the other Spooks one she made, which is just as fantastic.

I discovered how to get a screencap - take a photo. So, I can now prove Caroline John was in The Bill in 1985: Read more...

No idea whether this will actually cross-post given that LJ doesn't seem to be working at all half the time and very slow the other half.

I've driven quite a bit in the past couple of days. I went to Tescos yesterday, then to Sainsburys today - in the light, which is so much easier to drive in. Except that there was traffic which phases me a bit. I was quite impressed that I managed to get a new dressing gown for £6.40 (QS were having a 20% off day in the children's section).

I was good and added to my PicoWriMo thing. I was quite impressed that I managed to do 354 words, until I realised that by today I should have done 668 altogether. Never mind.

I just watched The Bill. It was so weird to see June Ackland smoking. It was a lot like Life on Mars with people smoking in the canteen and the parade room. I didn't think 1985 was that different to now, but since I was only 6 at the time, I don't really remember it that well. The story was of a missing girl, who was actually two years older than me! Brownlow scares me, looking thin. I can cope with everyone else looking young (although Cryer doesn't seem to have changed at all) but that's just weird.

On top of that, Norman Lovett was in it, pre-Red Dwarf. And there was a woman at the end whose hair and voice made me think she was familiar. I just remembered to watch the credits in time to discover she was Caroline John, who played Liz Shaw in Doctor Who. I had a cunning plan to take a screencap of it but it doesn't seem to work, I have no idea how people do it because it doesn't work in my DVD player or Media Player.

My parents spotted a trailer for Science Fiction Britannia on BBC4, which made my mum all excited because Paul Darrow was in it. I think Blakes 7 is probably one of the few programs where I can talk about the character's names, rather than the actor's and mum knows who I'm talking about. Well, except for Twiglet, and Hywel 'rhymes with bowel'.

I had a newsletter email from The Bill who were keen to tell me of all the love affairs going on at Sun Hill. I imagine there's some police work going on as well but it's certainly not mentioned. It did say, however, that Sylvester McCoy is going to be in episode this month. So I might end up watching that one. No idea when yet (they've re-done the website and it confused me, which didn't help) but I'm sure mum will spot him in the next episode trailer.

I took my car to the garage this morning and had to scrape the ice off my car, for the first time. Which was hard work, I had no idea. On the plus side, I have a new AC adaptor for my computer and it is now happy. They didn't seem to think it was a good idea to put my name on the package though, nor did they understand that when I told them. I'm actually quite looking forward to getting a new computer in a couple of years time, just so I won't have a Dell one any more.

It turns out Dell's Indians are not as good as I think they are. When the person I spoke to on Monday said they'd ordered me an adaptor, they were lying. I had an email yesterday asking me for the serial number so it could be ordered, and telling me they'd tried ringing my work number (several times) and couldn't get through, which quite obviously cannot be true. Apparently it's still supposed to arrive by Saturday, so we will see.

I've just taken out a policy for (credit) card protection - previously I just had my cards on dad's. It took them a week to send me the paperwork but didn't quite manage to send me the bit of paper that told me which cards were protected. Which is helpful.

I've accidentally upgraded my Firefox to 1.5.0.7, which is annoying. If that breaks it I'll be most upset. I can't upgrade to 2.0 until I'm sure the extensions I can't live without are on it, and I've tested the portable version and Linux, just in case, as I've had so much trouble with Firefox in the past.

I managed to add another 100 words to my SF ficathon, but I think it's going to need a second draft before it starts to look useable (my second drafts always involve starting from scratch, just using the first draft as a guide for what I sort of want to happen). On the PicoWriMo front I wrote 100 words. Which is not quite the 167 per day needed, but it better than nothing. Except that's one whole scene where nothing happens. Some editing might be required there. On the plus side, I re-read the 673 words I already had and it wasn't as bad as I thought it was.

Doing a bit of surfing to avoid writing, I discovered Lis Sladen had been in The Bill in 1989 (I didn't start watching it religiously till 1993, so a bit before my time) but there was a screencap with Tosh in it. And Lis too, obviously. On nearly the same subject, my next week's TV guide (it has a name, I just don't know what it is) has this to say about Life on Mars:

The second series of retro drama Life on Mars, starring Liz White and John Simm, is due on our screens early next year, and, sadly, it will be the final series. But fans will be heartened by news of a spin-off show set a decade on, in the Eighties. Ashes to Ashes (named after another David Bowie song) will be, according to BBC1 boss Peter Fincham, 'more Miami Vice than The Sweeney'.

Which just sounds really unlikely to me, but potentially quite cool, except that there's 80s Bill on DVD that I've not seen.