Bank Cock Up

Sometimes I wonder with banks, whether one hand knows what the other is doing. Earlier this week, my mother bought something on ebay. When she tried to pay for it, through paypal, she found that she couldn’t. She tried with my dad’s account, then mine and my best friend’s. All were refused. Turned out that they had taken it upon themselves to decide that it was fraudulent, and block all four cards! It wasn’t until over twenty four hours later, when my card was refused as I was paying for petrol, that I found out they’d blocked it.

Now, I understand safeguards, but to block someone’s card for making an ebay purchase, and then not tell them about it, I think is ridiculous and irresponsible. It was only after forty minutes on the phone that I was able to resolve this. It made me ask whether this would happen every time I made an online purchase for a larger sum of money. It made me question my banking choice. How dare someone decide that a purchase of mine was fraudulent, without even informing me.

While I appreciate vigilance, this purchase was not for a huge sum of money, and was to be shipped to the same address as the account. Surely it wasn’t likely to be that much of a fraud risk when considering this.

A First Review

I thought I’d try and change up this blog a little and scatter some reviews of books, tv, movies, music etc throughout the entries. Starting Now!

 

Last week, I had the displeasure of watching a two part BBC drama called ‘Dive’, directed by Dominic Savage. Described as a contemporary love story about two teens growing up in modern day Britain, this show starts out with a girl, Lindsay going to train at the pool, with a view to joining the 2012 olympic team. On returning home, she discovers that her parent’s marriage is over, and not only has her dad moved out, but her mother has moved her new boyfriend in on the same day! Thus starts a sequence of events whereby Lindsay goes off the rails, ends up partying and having sex with one of the popular boys, Robert. Conveniently, another girl in the popular crowd does not like this and slashes Lindsay with a blade, thus leading Lindsay to the emergency room where she is suddenly changed from a closed down, sullen teen who barely says two words, to a more talkative person who tells the nurse that she has been bleeding and that she thinks she might be pregnant. Cut to the olympic team selection meet, where Lindsay finds out that she has made the team. Robert, in the meantime has said that he doesn’t do relationships, but makes a sudden turnaround when he finds out that she is pregnant. A tentative friendship and sexual relationship develops, with Robert then attending the first scan with Lindsay. The second part of the drama follows Robert as he tries to decide whether to be there for Lindsay or not. This scenario is complicated by Robert’s brother who appears to be clinically depresses, having returned from Iraq.

The storyline is patchy, with very little continuity, with the writer having tried to pack far too much into the two hours allocated the show. The ‘brother returning from Iraq’ storyline is a show all of it’s own, and serves little than to take time away from the main storyline.

The characters are poorly developed, with Lindsay’s character saying very few words. In fact, it is to Aisling Loftus’ credit that she was able to say so much while not actually speaking at all. Both characters seem to have moments of being one thing and then seem to immediately switch to something entirely different, which leads me to believe that the writer was writing a plot, and the characters were just a coincidence of trying to achieve the plot objective.

The only saving grace this drama has is the acting skill of the two main characters, which endear them to the audience. Without this I fear many people would have just tuned out.

British Tv

British Tv at the moment is a dead loss. We have become like all  other consumer markets in this country. There are no longer any more really good, regular British dramas. We instead buy American shows to put on Tv.. Now, I’m not opposed to American shows, they’re great, but Britain has always had a strong showing of dramas on TV, and since the credit crunch, our TV has become a mass of documentaries and reality shows, and while I like these (mostly), I don’t think that British TV should be limited to this just because they think it’s cheap tv. We should push for more dramas on our screens. There are so many brilliant actors and writers out there just waiting for a chance. Perhaps we should start taking some risks, and put something other than the usual things on TV.

People

Some people really frustrate me. Why would you deliberately try and worry someone who is supposed to be your friend. Why would you ignore someone one day because you have something better to do and then be all over them the next day. The truth is, people use each other. People are horrible sometimes. Some people are so obsessed with looking good and sucking up to other people in authority that they just don’t care who they hurt. They think only of themselves and if they see someone else doing well, they get bitchy. It’s childish. If people just grew up and acted like human beings and were kind and compassionate to others, the world would be a far better place!

Why does success seem to be a dirty word??

I was watching “The Simon Cowell Factor” last night, and apart from the extremely annoying voiceover (honestly, I wanted to rip her out of the tv and strangle her with her own hair!!), it got me to thinking.

The programme was very overly critical of Simon Cowell, portraying him as a fairly unpopular, uncaring, ruthless businessman who is only interested in money. The thing the people in the programme seemed to not understand was that Simon Cowell could stop work yesterday and still have enough money to live the rest of his life out in relative luxury. He doesn’t have to work. He doesn’t need the money. He chooses to work because he loves his job. Yes, he’s egocentric, vain and self centred and he is probably the first person to admit that, but the thing that hit me was how the British media critics slated him in the show.

We British, as a whole, seem to feel very bitter towards any person who is successful. Whether it’s down to jealousy or not, I don’t know, seeing as equally successful people  are also equally bitchy.

It made me wonder whether they would rather he was broke, unemployed and living off the state? It seems stupid to me that we are perfectly happy to use celebrity when we have the opportunity, For example- news critics get plenty of material from Simon’s reality tv shows, and yet then decide to slate both him and his shows. This makes me feel like we are a culture who is two faced and bitter and bitchy. Maybe we should grow up and accept that Simon Cowell, along with many other successful people, are better off than us. They worked hard for it, and deserve our respect.

It is about time that we, as a nation, stopped looking down on people who are successful, just because they have done what we have not and we are bitter about it.

The Weather

I was reading some rules about writing the other day, and one of them was that you should never begin a story with the weather. It got me thinking how stupid that rule is. I mean, let’s face it. The weather is central to our lives. It defines what we wear, what we do, where we go.

The weather is everything. Last week, there was bright sunshine, that led people to sunbathe outside in skimpy clothes, and to use electric fans in the house to cool down. The weather broke on Sunday, and when I looked around, it was amazing to see the difference between the scenery on a dark, dank, cloudy day, as opposed to on a bright, hot sunny day.

As a writer, you need to use any tools and methods at your disposal to create atmosphere and to set the scene. Obviously, I’m not saying ‘become a cliche’, but realistically, to say not to begin a story with the weather, when, (if you can find a different and inventive way to do so), it is such an invaluable tool, seems to me, to be pure idiocy.

Yes, you want to be individual, and original, but not to the detriment of your writing. At the end of the day, when you create characters, you make a commitment to them to do them justice. They have trusted you to tell your story, so, if using the weather at the beginning is something fitting for your story, hang convention! Do what is best for your story and your characters, and ignore your critics!!

The Elephant In The Room

Have you ever noticed how, the less you talk about something, the bigger it gets. And the bigger it gets, the less you want to talk about it, and then the process starts again until this thing is so huge that it is like an elephant. And then it’s like, “there’s this elephant, no one else seems to see it. Maybe I imagined it” and so you ignore it. And this elephant is mad and keeps trying to get your attention, but you refuse to let it, And then, you get to the point where you explode just because you refuse to notice it. Basically, the elephant you’ve been trying to ignore, squashes you. Tramples you. Crushes you.

I’ll leave you with that thought.