Bang Bang Bang Bang

The recording session was not terribly successful. Paul was being even more of a perfectionist than usual, found he couldn't play up to his own demands, got frustrated and self aware - afraid of the songs, as he put it - which of course made him tense and play worse.

We got some takes done - at least good enough as guide tracks for Fabio to lay down drums to - and went out for a relaxing nighttime picnic on the beach, watching the final firework display of the festival with hundreds of others, sitting on the pebbles.

There were two hundred or so boats of all kinds, visible only by their lights and flashes of firework. A barque and a longship amidst all the yaghts and inflatables.

We cycled home past the longest queue we'd ever seen. Easily a thousand people on it's own, maybe two. They were queueing for...transport home. Dozens and dozens of busses and coaches gridlocking Portsmouth all trying to get back to towns all over the UK at the same time.
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I always forget just how much software is installed on a multipurpose computer. And how many drivers. And when I reinstall windows from scratch, I generally forget where some of the installation disks are.
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Today's television is all six episodes of Invasion:Earth. It was an attempt to create a gritty, big budget, british sci-fi miniseries. Most of the flak it recieved wasn't about the script or characterisation, though both could have used a few more drafts. It wasn't the acting either, though that was patchy. Or even the effects, though they were very primative CGI. The macguffin of the alien motivation was pretty weak too.

No, it was the fact that the good guys lost. It's the story of a hopeless war fought by humans against a barely seen, undefeatable enemy. Every time the humans come up was a weapon - technological, biological, nuclear - there's a temporary reprieve, then the alien monsters came back stronger. In the end, the only defence against them is for mankind to destroy the entire earth. And that's what I like about Invasion:Earth.