"Half a Year, Half a Year, Half a Year Onward..."

Photo by NASA Hubble Space Telescope on Unsplash

Apologies to Alfred, Lord Tennyson for butchering his iconic opening to The Charge of The Light Brigade for the sake of a cheeky headline.

This blog has now been on "active duty" for six months now... and seems to be ticking over nicely.

To be honest, it actually feels much longer, like the gravitational pull of a black hole warping my perception of time. On one hand life is racing by at an accelerated rate, while on the other the blog wades slowly through treacle.

I realise this iteration of my blogging 'career' has grown out of the detritus and chaos left by my previous near twenty years of blogging, but I somehow fooled myself into thinking that that would make it easier to stay focussed on what I wanted this new edition to be.

This has not been the case.

Of course, I wish there was more tabletop roleplaying gaming material on it, as that was one of the main reasons for returning to the bloggosphere and it's always been where, I felt, I was the most creative.

Previous blogs have boasted gameable material, monsters, magic, and houserules as and when such tickled my fancy or I was suitably inspired. But so far - for the reasons I mentioned the other day - there's been bupkis.

I also wish my health - both physical and mental - was in a better place, but ultimately that's all down to me ensuring I pull my finger out and take positive steps to alleviate those issues.

The erratic heartbeat of the blog's views/hit count over six months

Behind-the-scenes, a conversation the other month with Tim Brannan (of The Other Side) finally managed to rid myself of my obsession with "hits" and where they were coming from.

Looking at the views individual posts are getting also paints a very different picture to the occasional tidal wave of bots scraping the blog as a whole for whatever it is they think they might find here.

Each article gets a pretty consistent amount of visitors that I'm very happy with. When you look at the blog's widgets charting "popular posts" for the week, the "scores" that separate each are usually only one or two hits apart.

These days I'm much more focussed on getting comments - either directly on the blog or on Facebook (where I promote all my posts). Comments, for me, are the lifeblood of blogging and the best, most genuine, reflection of a true connection with your readership.

Obviously, I'd prefer more people left messages on the actual blog, but Facebook has the bonus that readers can simply react to a post without the necessity of sharing their more detailed thoughts on my nonsense. 

Maybe, eventually, I'll write something revolutionary and suddenly my site will blow up with large-scale, genuine engagement, but in the real world I'm more than content to just keep posting my posts for my circle of friends and acquaintances. 

As this new blog continues to grow, I would like to develop that hardcore band of followers - my posse, if you will.

My goal is for "quality" over "quantity". As I've just said, I'm not striving for hits and clicks. Just a coterie of readers willing to interact with my babble, offer constructive criticism, and engage in conversations.

Look to the right and you will see in the side column (below the current 'featured article') a widget entitled Join The Posse. Under avatars for my current Followers is a button marked Follow.

Simply press that and - all being well - your avatar will join the ranks of this group of brave heroes.

I do think you'll need a Google account for this to work (Blogger, after all, is a Google thing).

Not only does this mean that my expertly crafted prose will appear in your Google "Reading List" but it demonstrates to me that you're interested in my waffle and support what I'm doing (without having to part with a single red cent, sign up to Patreon, or back my Kickstarter).

Since I last brought this subject up, I've had two new recruits join our happy little party: my best mate, Paul, and my old online pal Ivy aka The Happy Whisk.

"Watch Out for That First Step, It's a Doozy!"

After a young man gets separated from his friends while in the woods, he falls into a 10-foot deep pit of spikes, impaling him through the leg, and leaving him trapped. He quickly learns that his fall was not an accident.

Pitfall is a survival horror film starring Richard Harmon, Alexandra Essoe, and Randy Couture. In Theatres May 29.

Sometimes the simple ideas are the best. Pitfall looks like a compelling cross between a Jason Voorhees slasher and a Dungeons & Dragons wilderness adventure.

In this house, Pitfall is already on the list for a future Tim and Paul DVD* Night viewing.

* NB. In this day and age the term "DVD" also embraces streaming, Blu-Rays, VOD etc

THROWBACK THURSDAY: #TimFest 2025

A year ago (late April, 2025) we threw a party to mark the 20th anniversary of my life-changing aortic aneurysm, or more accurately to celebrate the extra 20 years (so far) that I have had since the National Health Service (NHS) saved my life.

Here's the pictures - and text - I used to mark the occasion on the blog: 

Much to Rachel's surprise, it was actually my idea to host this event (I am, if you didn't already know, notoriously anti-social). I'd seen that 'new' Doctor Who was 20 years old this year and I realised that my brush with death had come several episodes into the regenerated show's first season.

Up until this year, I have been very nervous - almost superstitious - about even knowing we'd reached another anniversary and I never wanted to know the exact date or too many details of the circumstances (beyond the obvious facts that I had suffered a dissecting aortic aneurysm and then a stroke on the operating table).

But, this year, I finally accepted that two decades was far enough removed from the original, awful, event that maybe it was time to invite friends and family round to share a few drinks, have some nice food, and - at Rachel's suggestion - even raise a bit of money for the Aortic Dissection Awareness charity.

While Rachel - who actually organised the whole shindig, invited the guests, prepared the food, decorated the house etc - called the event "20 Years of Tim", others were calling it "Tim Day" and even "TimFest". 

I'll confess while it was immensely flattering to have all these people turn up to celebrate "me", it was also incredibly overwhelming and every so often I had to find a few calming minutes of quiet solitude with Alice and Obi (my two favouritest dogs in the whole, wide world).

Poor Alice, who is dealing with her own medical issues, seemed rather out of sorts as well, with so many people in "her space", that she didn't even engage in her usual rough and tumble with Obi (she's renowned for bullying him mercilessly, despite being a fraction of his size!).

I was quite gobsmacked by how much Acrobatic Flea (my signature character from our old games of Villains & Vigilantes) branding there was for the day - from the lovely T-shirt that Rachel's parents had made for me to the cup cakes created by the wonderful baker over the road from us.

Just before the group photograph was taken, Rachel gave a short, tearful, speech about how brilliant everyone had been in the wake of my sudden hospitalisation - from the amazing doctors and nurses of the NHS to all our friends who had pitched in to help us get through this. It even got to me, despite having already heard a dry run the night before, and a good number of other attendees. 

On the food table was a small framed poster with a QR code that people could scan, if they wished to, to make a charitable donation to Aortic Dissection Awareness.  

There was light-hearted talk about making Tim Day an annual event, which I did relay to Rachel, but I think one social event in 20 years is probably quite enough.

Top Dogs: Obi, the visitor (front), and our beloved Alice.

FAMILY PORTRAIT: Me, Rachel (holding Alice) and Rachel's parents

There were even garden games available for the young - and young-at-heart

EX-CUPCAKE! We're lucky to have a gifted cake maker live across the road from us

Excuse me, there's a Flea on my cupcake!

A mere fraction of the food and drink Rachel provided on the day

While the event was never intended as a "gift giving" day I was stunned
by the unexpected gifts I did receive.

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Carpe That Diem! Or "I'm An Idiot!"

I try not to dwell on regrets, I've long accepted the fact that nothing good comes from such negativity, as long as you learn something.

However, one of my biggest regrets - from which the main thing I've learned is my natural-born laziness is one of my most self-sabotaging traits - is never following up on the letter I received in September, 2002, from Hodder & Stoughton.

I'd always quite fancied myself as something of a writer and, at that time, had what I thought was a pretty decent idea for a novel.

So, I drafted a synopsis and sent it off to Hodder & Stoughton, having carefully picked them out from the Writers' & Artists' Yearbook as being a publisher that might be interested in my idea.

I got a letter back on July 31 asking for three sample chapters.

These were written and dispatched and then, on September 11, 2002, I got a letter back from the submissions editor.

You can read the important information below:

It was an amazingly positive way to say " no, thank you, but..." and I should have been encouraged by the letter.

You know what I did with it? What thriller project I wrote next to send to the publishers?

Nothing.

Sweet Fanny Adams.

Nada.

Zilch.

Honestly, now, I have no idea why, except, I expect I was distracted by drink, girls, TV, cinema, the usual ephemeral nonsense that catches my fickle attention.

I'm not printing this letter to say: "Look at me, what a great writer I am", nor am I seeking any sympathy (as there was no one to blame but myself).

Rather I want to emphasise what an idiot I was.

This is a lesson to all you young whippersnappers out there, to my godson Alec and his sister Bettany, to Paul's girls, and all the children of this blog's readers: don't be like me.

When life gives you lemons, don't file them away then go to the store and buy lemonade.

Take advantage of every opportunity that comes your way.

Carpe Diem!

At the very least, I should have used that letter to try and get myself an agent... which in turn could have kept me better focused on my professed desire to become a published author.

The damage my stroke did to my concentration - and other aspects of my brain - pretty much guarantees this ship has sailed, but if any good is to come from all this, I want it to stand as an object lesson that others can learn from.

The galling thing about my gross stupidity - and laziness - is the number of films I continue to see that feature ideas very similar to the ones I had way back in my proto-novel with the working title of The Donner Project.

THROWBACK THURSDAY: A Snapshot In Time

My arrival at the pub in London, being surprised by the appearance of my old friends...

As I look ahead to my 60th birthday later this year, I can't help but reminisce about my brilliant 50th birthday celebrations.

One of the many highlights was a "surprise university reunion" that Paul organised in a London pub with a gaggle of my old university buddies from Bournemouth.

Wayne - these days a professional photographer - snapped some incredible images of the day, as well as a selection of stylish portraits.

Here's a small sampling of his amazing photography.

Me and the missus...

Portrait of Jon...

Paul, Pricey and I pretend The Lord Mayor's Show fireworks are for me...

Yours Truly: Dressed To Impress...

Best Of Friends: Lou and Rosie

Paul & Rachel

Jon, Paul, and Lou

Paul - part of Wayne's portrait project

Rachel broke her glass, but still managed to hold on to her wine...

Rosie and Midge wend their way home after the reunion...

Group shot (taken by Rachel, after coaching from Wayne on how to use his camera)

Something arty to end with...

You'll Have To Pry My Blu-Rays From My Cold, Dead Hand

My new Frieren blu-rays along with the Frieren Funko Pop! Paul got me for Christmas

One of the few things I picked up for myself in the Boxing Day/New Year sales this year was the blu-ray box set of the first part of the first season of Frieren: Beyond Journey's End.

But, you say, that's available "for free" on both Netflix and Crunchyroll, so why buy it?

To which I retort that not only does 'solid media' rule, but that just because the show is currently on those two streamers that doesn't guarantee it will always be.

Netflix, for instance, is always churning through its contents and removing great swathes of material to make way for new stuff. 

But, owning a show or movie on solid media (Blu-ray, DVD, even VHS) means it's always yours for as long as you have the means to play it (and you treat the media with enough respect to prolong its life).

Even if you purchase something digitally, you're essentially just renting it.

The Case of The Missing Music

Several years ago I purchased - via iTunes - the album Stand By For Action! The Music Of Barry Gray, which was essentially all the beautifully bombastic and inspirational themes and tunes from the Gerry Anderson shows I grew up with.

A magical collection of music that could very quickly carry me off to my happy place, thanks to some of the greatest theme tunes ever composed: UFO, I'm looking at you in particular.

Only, when Rachel and I went for a car journey the other week and I fired up my "driving playlist" (a mix of tracks from throughout the ages and across multiple genres) I realised that the opening track - Stand By For Action - wasn't there.

When I later checked the listing for my Barry Gray album on my iPhone, I saw more than half of the tracks were "faded out" (see picture at top of this article), and when I tried to click on them a message would pop up saying these tracks weren't available in my country!!!

WTF? I bought and paid for this music years ago.

This being Apple there's no customer service, no recourse for the angry customer to get an explanation.

Then late last year the tracks magically reappeared in my library, without a word or an apology. So now I can start blasting them out again.

But how long before they disappear again? Or tracks from other artists? God, what if all my Atarashii Gakko! music vanished over night? I don't even want to contemplate such an apocalyptic scenario.

But this isn't really a dig at Apple per se, as I love my iPhone (thank you, Rachel!), it's more about the fact that when you're talking about digital media... it doesn't really exist, it never feels truly your own, and it is vulnerable to the whims of the digital realm. 

Combine this with the numerous hic-cups I've had buying movies from Sky Cinema (I've given up pre-ordering movies this way and have reverted to Blu-rays), it's no wonder I'm sticking to physical media.

I know they take up room (not as much as a VHS cassette, of course), but they look cool and have all those spiffy extras that someday I'll get round to watching.

When you have a solid disc - or book, or whatever - in your hand, it's yours until you give it up. No megacorporation can arbitrarily decide - without explanation - that that object is no longer yours and remove it from your possession like a thief in the night.

Admittedly, on the music front I still actually err towards digital these days, but most of the time now I simply stream tracks via Rachel's Spotify account anyway.

PS. I know this is slightly hypocritical as I am a massive proponent of audiobooks, particularly the material produced by Big Finish, which I primarily purchase as digital downloads and play through their own app. 

My theory here is that these will exist at least for as long as Big Finish does... and I couldn't imagine living in a world without Big Finish!

"You've Got To Laugh, Haven't You?"

I made this!

"It's not the girl, Peter, it's the building! Something terrible is about the enter our world and this building is obviously the door. The architect's name was Ivo Shandor. I found it in Tobin's Spirit Guide. He was also a doctor. Performed a lot of unnecessary surgery. And then in 1920 he founded a secret society...

"After the First World War, Shandor decided that society was too sick to survive. And he wasn't alone. He had close to a thousand followers when he died. They conducted rituals up on the roof, bizarre rituals intended to bring about the end of the world, and now it looks like it may actually happen!"

Not the introduction to a Call of Cthulhu adventure, but some of Egon's dialogue from the original Ghostbusters and highly pertinent to what I want to try and say here.

Speaking as someone who has entertained the idea of running both a Red Dwarf RPG and a Ghostbusters campaign, I have strong feelings about the intersection of comedy and roleplaying games.

Where I feel the old Ghostbusters RPG went wrong - although I fully understand why they did it - was to establish a game world more inspired by the cartoons than the movie, full of bad puns, books with silly names, aliens in sports cars etc

The original Ghostbusters movie (a horror-comedy) worked because it was a seriously scary situation (just read the backstory, above, again) being handled by humorous characters (i.e. players in an RPG).

The humour comes from the approach of the characters (and their wildly variable skill checks) rather than the situation per se.

For me, that's where roleplaying game comedy comes from.

Why do you think there are so many memes about Ravenloft campaigns featuring Leslie Nielsen's vampire from Dracula: Dead and Loving It?

When a module (or game) tries to be funny, it has to take the simplest approach, and that's the most universal. Which usually means bad puns.

And, I don't know if it's my British "stiff-upper-lipness" but I'd be too embarrassed to read out a NPC's dreadful pun name (Ivor Clue, anyone?) to my group.

Humour is very personal, what's funny to one group may mean nothing to another.

I'd rather listen to me and my movie buddy Paul riff on a naff horror film than ever listen to something like Mystery Science Theatre 3000.

Not because I think we're better at it than MST3K, it's just we've developed our own in-jokes over years of watching crap movies and have our own points of reference that probably wouldn't mean anything to anyone else unfortunate enough to be listening in.

And it's the same for comedy in roleplaying games.

Of course, there are extreme comedy games, like the delightful Toon and Rocky & Bullwinkle, which are all about slapstick and establishing a cartoon verisimilitude, but they really lean into the craziness and are a whole 'nother kettle of fish.

However, take the set-up of Red Dwarf: the last surviving human (a bloke) who will never, ever, meet another human being in his life, have a family etc and knows he's doomed to die alone; a hologram of his priggish nemesis; an insane supercomputer; and an amoral creature evolved from a feral cat.

Ghostbusters

In different hands, and depending how lenient the gamesmaster was, that set-up could unfold into a grimdark tale of Lovecraftian cosmic horror and existential anxiety.

But, in the hands of most roleplayers, it's almost certainly going to degenerate into wonderful silliness, knob gags, and banter.

A good gaming group, especially one that has been together for years and knows each other's senses of humour, can - sometimes too easily - turn any "serious" gaming set-up into a comedy.

I'm not talking about totally taking the piss and trashing the campaign setting (that's just childish and idiotic behaviour), but having a laugh within the confines of the game can be very therapeutic.

There's always room for witty word play and the occasional actual joke written into the setting, but the players don't need to meet "NPCs with funny names".

They're gamers. Having fun.

If they have the imagination to play a roleplaying game, the chances are your players have a good sense of humour, so give them free rein to crack wise occasionally.

Sometimes, of course, this isn't appropriate for the setting or mood that the gamesmaster has carefully crafted, and he's quite within his rights to put his foot down, and remind the players that (imaginary) lives are at stake.

It's just telling the group that they're playing, say, a Ghostbusters or Red Dwarf campaign gives players licence to relax a little, not take their characters' serious jobs so seriously, and relish in their screw-ups.

THROWBACK THURSDAY: How Many 50-Year-Olds Have Superhero-Themed Birthday Parties? Not Enough

The 'Must-Eat League': from left - Richard, Erica, Paul, Jeni, Pete, Me, Nick, and Clare...

The month of celebrations for my half-century (in 2016) came to an end with a superhero-themed meal at the Oriental Buffet in Tonbridge, with a loose comic book-inspired dress code.

You can't really go wrong with an all-you-can-eat dining experience, accentuated by a selection of T-shirts and outfits that ran the gamut from Richard's Batman shirt (he wore the plastic Bat-mask for 90 per cent of the evening as well, which was true dedication to the theme) to Jeni's She-ra costume (complete with gauntlets and headgear) and Rachel's bespoke Marvel comic book dress.

As well as having decorated our table ahead of time with appropriate balloons (several of which also survived the journey home afterwards), my wonderful wife still had one gobsmacking surprise up her sleeve: the best birthday cake ever!

Based on Des Taylor's design from my main birthday present, it was the scumptious, double-decker cake you can see below (created by a local cake aficionado), complete with Acrobatic Flea, Flash, and Supergirl decorations:

BEST. CAKE. EVER!

BEST. WIFE. EVER!

Special mention has to be made of how Paul turned up at our door, before we went to the restaurant. The doorbell rang, and I opened the door to be greeted by The Black Power Ranger!

Apparently he'd changed into his superhero alter ego outside our house (although I still suspect he'd travelled down from London on the train like this, only he'd used super-ninja skills to blend in with the crowd).

Sadly, the costume was too uncomfortable - and totally impractical - for going to a restaurant in. But major kudos for borrowing this outfit and throwing himself into the spirit of the evening!

What Is Seen Cannot Be Unseen: Alice has no clue as to what is happening at this point!

Creepozoids (1987)

My best friend - and fellow crappy horror movie aficionado - Paul popped down from London the other day for one of our semi-regular film nights.

His viewing suggestion, 1987's Creepozoids, turned out to be an hilariously awful, low-budget, Alien  mockbuster-style B-movie treat.

Set in a "futuristic" 1998, six years after a nuclear apocalypse, war is still raging and five of the most useless military deserters find themselves hiding out in a mysterious, abandoned laboratory, unable to leave because of a sudden downpour of acid rain.

Remember when "acid rain" was ubiquitous in sci-fi and post-apocalyptic movies, as shorthand for manmade environmental destruction? Ahh, those were the days!

The "big name star" of Creepozoids is the delightfully scruffy Linnea Quigley (of The Return of the Living Dead and Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers fame) as Blanca, who pairs up with a walking slice of ham called Butch (Ken Abraham).

They are accompanied by the nominal leader of the pack, Jake (Richard Hawkins, who would go on to play an air traffic controller in Close Encounters of The Third Kind), his girlfriend, Kate (Kim McKamy aka adult movie star Ashlyn Gere, whose character quirk appears to be an inability to sit down during meal scenes), and anxious, tech "wiz" Jesse (Michael Aranda). You know he's the "brains" of the group because he wears glasses... and looks a bit like Shane Black's Hawkins from Predator.

Except for a short spell of exterior work to get the characters into the underground bunker, Creepozoids is shot entirely in a warehouse, with a budget of around of £15 (none of which, seemingly, went on the script).

Very quickly our heroes realise they are trapped in the laboratory complex with a large humanoid monster that is clearly a man in a bargain basement xenomorph Halloween costume.

As amusing as that creature is, it's nothing compared to the giant rats that are obviously oversized stuffed toys which the poor actors are having to shake around to simulate the vicious attacks from these killer rodents.

Impressively plotless, what passes for a story in Creepozoids (and, no, I don't know why that's the title) is a series of random encounters that rapidly whittles down our protagonists without really explaining what the creature actually wants.

Bizarrely for a film that barely clocks in with a 72 minute runtime, there's also a lot of padding in writer-director David DeCoteau's film (co-written with Dave Eisenstark under the pen name of Burford Hauser). 

Paul and I lost count of the number of times various characters crawled up and down the same, short, piece of gunge-splattered passageway.

Then the final showdown between the last man standing and the big bad monster just felt interminable. 

This climactic confrontation also took a strange turn when the monster was injected with a randomly acquired syringe of something-or-other, seemingly killing it only for - moments later - a freakish puppet baby to sprout from its head and continue the aggression.

To add insult to injury, Creepozoids doesn't even deign to have a proper conclusion - instead just suddenly ending on a freezeframe of the mutant baby. Presumably this was to set up the proposed sequel that never materialised.

Perversely, this isn't the worst film we've ever seen - that honour belongs to either Shark Exorcist or the entire Camp Blood franchise - Creepozoids almost gets a pass because it's really an extended vignette rather than an actual movie. 

And you can't really knock anything that stars Linnea Quigley.

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Real Life Ghostbustin'

Filmed in the middle of the night on a "nanny cam" in our old house (in late September, 2015), I've kept this quiet (only Paul has previously seen it) until now because I know this kind of thing can freak Rachel out. 

 

A couple of seconds in, you can see an "orb" of some description fly from the top of the screen towards our old TV (on the right). 

It appears to hit the TV and ricochet off towards the bottom of the picture. 

I'm not saying it's a ghost (it's way more likely to be a dust mote... as they really exist) - but it's easy to see how these things can be construed as "supernatural" by those who want them to be. 

So, yes, our old house was probably haunted!

HALLOWEEN HORROR: Zombeavers (2014)

A trio of spunky college girls head into the wilderness for a weekend of girltime in an isolated, lakeside cabin - but their plans are disrupted, first by the arrival of their horny boyfriends and then by an invasion of flesh-eating, zombie beavers.

Yes, Zombeavers is as daft as it sounds and it knows it. It takes its crass premise and runs with it, resulting in a near-perfect blend of teen comedy and OTT gore-horror.

Directed by Jordan Rubin from a script co-written by himself and Jon & Al Kaplan, the humour is base (come on, they're talking about beavers nearly non-stop, what did you expect?), there's some sex and skin, gruesome beaver-related injuries, a genuine sense of spam-in-a-cabin jeopardy, decent performances from the central cast, surprising twists and delightfully low-budget special effect monsters.

The killer beavers appear to be a combination of puppets and animatronics, but it doesn't matter because the levity and general joie de vivre that clearly went into making this movie carries you through.

From the deadpan humour of the opening scene to the Sinatra-esque theme over the final credits and the wonderful, post-credits, tease of a possible sequel idea (that is so obvious when you think of it I'm surprised no one hasn't already made this movie), Zombeavers just continually knocks it out the park.

Demonstrating that he knows my tastes so well, Paul got me this DVD for my birthday back in 2014 and we watched it that very day when he popped down to hand over my presents (my birthday wasn't for another week-and-a-half, but we weren't going to pass up a chance to see a film called Zombeavers) and we were both genuinely surprised by how good it was.

Originally, I think we'd both thought from the trailers that it would fall into "so bad, it's good" category, but it's actually really well-made, a helluva lotta fun and rather clever. It is genuinely one of the best all-round low-budget, horror films I'd seen that year.

One thing that struck us, in particular, was its subtle subversion of the horror movie staple of the "Final Girl" - a character you can normally pick out within the first five or ten minutes of horror movie.

Paul even said he might have to pick up a copy for himself

And please, please, please Mr Rubin, make ZomBEES as soon as soon as humanly possible - you've got a guaranteed sale here!

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Pleasant Dreams!

Back in 2015, Rodney Ascher, director of the controversial documentary Room 237 about Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, released his documentary, The Nightmare, about the phenomenon of sleep paralysis.

Now this is something I have experience of.

Despite my love of all things horror-orientated (monsters, cannibals, ghosts etc), when it comes to real life I'm not so brave, so as we are fast approaching Halloween I thought it would be time to share my own 'horror movie' experience:

Way back in 2002 I went to visit Paul when he was working for an English-language newspaper in Beijing, China.

He was staying in a big, one-bedroom flat in a tall tower block, so I was sleeping on a makeshift (but comfortable) bed in his lounge.

Alcohol usually played a large part in making sure I had a good night's sleep... but one night I awoke with an "invisible person" sitting on my chest; pinning me down. I couldn't move!

I have no recollection of what happened later but talking to Paul the next day I discovered I wasn't the first person this had happened to. There was the usual urban myth circulating about someone jumping to their death from one of the flats... but no-one could ever say which one.

Later I read about 'sleep paralysis', which (basically) means your mind has woken up but your body is still asleep, so you can see and think - but not move; but at the time I was as convinced as I've ever been that I had come face-to-invisible-face with a ghost!!!

From Wikipedia:

In Chinese folk culture, sleep paralysis is referred as "gui yà chúang" (鬼压床), literally: "Ghost press bed": 鬼: ghost, 压: press, 床: bed. The belief is that a spirit or ghost is sitting or lying on top of the individual while they were sleeping, causing the sleep paralysis. This is thought to be a minor body possession by the forces from the dead, and usually doesn't cause any harm to the victim.

HEALTH UPDATE: There Is No Update!

Uplifting card found in the lift of my doctor's surgery, part of Jim's Smile Project

Had my hospital appointment at the orthopaedic department of our nearby cottage hospital this week... and it was a bit of an anti-climax after all the hopes of a "breakthrough" that I had resting on it.

I have got a referral now to The Pain Clinic, possibility for an injection into my spine to alleviate the extreme discomfort, but still no definitive answers - or even really theories - as to why my legs have suddenly stopped working as they should.

Afterwards, I had an email from my GP asking me to book a non-urgent appointment with her, but when Rachel and I went to the surgery later in the week, the earliest face-to-face appointment wasn't until mid-October!

So, we settled for a telephone interview in the middle of September instead. I'll be honest, I have little faith in telephone appointments, especially when relating to a physical condition... but if that's the best we can get, then I'll take it.

It still annoys me that she sees this as a "non-urgent" case, when I've lost the correct use of my legs!

We were actually at the surgery for my regular INR (blood thickness) test, but - thankfully - that was still within its target range and I don't need to go back until late November. If it's been out of range then I'd have had to come back weekly until it settled down again and I dreaded the prospect of repeating the fandango of getting me - and a walking frame - in and out of the car and into and out of the surgery more than we had to. 

Beside my blood behaving itself, the best part of the visit was finding one of James Moy's positive messages on a card in the lift from the ground floor up to the surgery (see above). This is part of his nationwide Jim's Smile Project to bring a bit of light into our gloomy world. It couldn't have come at a better time: I certainly needed it this week.

Another thing we did this week was buy me a second walking frame - this one with wheels and a basket on. I'm still getting used to it, but it's certainly added some speed to my getting around.

Notification that my Pain Clinic referral is under review came in the post yesterday, with the depressing information that their decision could take until late October. Hopefully, though, it won't take that long.

So, I suppose, progress is being made... slowly.

But the depression and frustration of not being able to do simple tasks (like picking objects up and moving them around, having a shower etc) is increasing as I realise how much I took my legs for granted in the 'good old days'. And all this comes with great pain and discomfort that interferes with my attempts to divert myself from my new disability, so reading, writing, and even watching TV can become a chore at times.

I'd just like a medical professional to tell me what is causing this instability and what can be done to correct it.

As my best mate Paul pointed out when I was talking to him about all this nonsense, if they don't know what's causing the problem how do they know the injection will help?

I guess I was too excited about anything being done to ameliorate my condition that I forgot to ask.

My bad!

Shark Exorcist (2014)

Let's be honest for a moment: in our time, Paul and I have watched a lot of shit films.

But Shark Exorcist takes this to a new low.

I'd bought the DVD for Paul's birthday, in March, as a joke present. It had both "shark" and "exorcist" in the title, so surely it was a film we needed to see.

Without even watching it, Paul had loaned it to a mate who - after viewing it - had decided to take it to Cash Converters before I foolishly suggested to Paul that it might be a good candidate for one of our horror film nights.

Paul and I finally sat down to watch it one weekend in 2017... and are both still reeling from the psychological trauma of the experience.

To put it politely, it makes The Asylum's output look like Alfred Hitchcock or Werner Herzog; it is unbelievably poor. Really, really, really awful.

Shark Exorcist gives Camp Blood a run for its money for the title of worst film ever to pollute our viewing history.

Possibly produced on a dare, or a student film that has escaped into the wild, 2014's Shark Exorcist was clearly made by someone who has never studied how a film actually works.

The movie's full of scenes that start too early and then run on for too long; extended sequences where the filmmakers were clearly unable to record the actor's speaking, so we get to watch a lot of miming and pointing; a script that tears up the basic concept of a three-act story (or any form of coherent narrative); and not one but two painfully redundant post-credits scenes.

This is before we even consider the universally abysmal level of acting, not helped by the fact that several of the actresses look noticeably bored or simply don't want to be there any more.

As well as lacking a protagonist (even the titular exorcist is only in a handful of scenes), what passes for a story in Shark Exorcist is risible nonsense, all over the place, and totally confused.

There's an evil nun who sacrifices someone to Satan... or a demonic shark. Which lives in a lake.

It's a crappy CGI shark that looks like it was designed on a ZX81 by the work experience kid during his lunch break.

Then a year later three women visit the lake and one, Ali (Angela Kerecz) gets bitten by the shark (her wound looks like she was eating a hot dog and spilled ketchup on her thigh).

She goes to hospital, but then miraculously recovers from her life-threatening ketchup spill... because she's now possessed by the demon shark (or is a wereshark?).

The girl starts attacking random people (maybe she shapechanges into the shark, maybe she summons it, the film isn't clear on this topic).

Unfortunately, she makes the mistake of killing the brother of a priest (Bobby Kerecz - husband of the actress playing Ali), who then tracks her down and decides to exorcise her (even though he admits he isn't a trained exorcist).

There's a ridiculously comical exorcism scene, which features the best line in the movie: "You're going to need a bigger cross!"

After which things get even weirder. The priest becomes possessed and bites another woman, but then the demon shark drops out of a portal in the sky (WTF?), and what passes for a story goes totally off the rails.

There's an assortment of oddities in and around all this, such as the "ghost hunting" TV show that's tracking the demon shark, some wannabe witches in a nearby churchyard, a sorority initiation (where something happens off-camera that's never addressed), a bizarre and prolonged sequence of a perv spying on a woman sunbathing (in the most miserable conditions), the return of the killer nun etc

If you enjoy bad movies then this is hilarious, and we were laughing out loud for large portions of its blissfully short 71-minute duration, but there are also moments of mind boggling bewilderment where you have no clue what's going on (and I don't mean in a trippy 2001: A Space Odyssey way).

Now, I'm worried that I'm making it sound better than it is. Trust me. Shark Exorcist is dire. As I write this, it has a rating of 1.4 (out of 10) on IMDB, from 2,100 reviews. Camp Blood has a 3.1 rating, from 1,300 reviews.

I also think Sharxorcist would have been a better name.

Oh, and there was also (somehow) a sequel, Shark Exorcist 2: Unholy Waters (which we haven't seen... yet):

Camp Blood (2000)

In my long, and varied, history of movie-watching (for fun, professionally, or for university), I've sat through a lot of rough movies, but Camp Blood is possibly the worst film I have ever seen.

Made with a budget of about $1, the script is bad, the acting is bad, the camera work (and film stock) is bad.

The colour is washed out for most of the movie's duration so the characters have yellowy, Simpson-like skin and sound quality fades in and out (depending on how bored the boom mike operator was, I guess).

Camp Blood is a sad attempt at a low-budget slasher that, thankfully, sinks in to that precious reality of "so bad it's bad". This is a film that deserves a fan-commentary track, MT3K-style.

There's an attempt at a backstory - a man wearing a clown mask in the woods who likes to kill people - but it doesn't really make any difference to the plot.

From the gratuitous nudity in the first five minutes (tricking you into thinking the film will be full of T&A... it isn't), through several mind-blowing moments of what-the-frakkery to the supposedly clever "twist" ending which is just risible, Camp Blood can only be enjoyed by those who truly revel in crap cinema - or are totally wasted.

I cannot stress how bad this film is.

It's bad. Really. Bad.

Then, back in 2018, Paul (who had watched the first Camp Blood with me on one of our regular "film nights") stumbled upon a sequel to Camp Blood on Prime Video (Ghost Of Camp Blood), that was released that year, which led me to investigate further and discover that there are, in fact, numerous sequels to this steaming pile of poodoo.

Currently, IMDB lists 13 titles in the franchise that began in 1999 (including the 30-minute Camp Blood: The Musical, which I don't think has anything to do with the the other movies whatsoever):

• Camp Blood 2 (2000)
• Within The Woods (2005)
• [Camp Blood: The Musical (2006)]
• Camp Blood First Slaughter (2014)
• Camp Blood 4 (2016)
• Camp Blood 5 (2016)
• Camp Blood 666 (2016)
• It Kills aka Camp Blood 7 (2017)
• Ghost of Camp Blood (2018)
• Camp Blood 8: Revelations (2019)
• Camp Blood 666 Part 2: Exorcism of The Clown (2023) 
• Camp Blood X: Animated (2023)
• Camp Blood 9: Bride of Blood (2024)
  
  

At the time, Wikipedia went someway to explaining what is going on here:

[Writer/director Brad] Sykes quickly followed up his 1999 release of Camp Blood with a sequel, Camp Blood 2, in October 2000. A third unofficial film, Within the Woods, was released five years after that, in 2005. Sykes wrote and directed both sequels and actress Jennifer Ritchkoff reprised her role as Tricia Young for Camp Blood 2, but did not return for the third film.

Four sequels were released beginning 2014 with Camp Blood: First Slaughter, which was written and directed by Mark Polonia, and is sometimes referred to as Camp Blood 3. Three more instalments were released, Camp Blood 4, Camp Blood 5, and Camp Blood 666, all of which were released in 2016. Like First Slaughter, these films do not take into account the third movie created by Brad Sykes in the Camp Blood series, Within the Woods.

Check that out: THREE of the sequels came out in the same year. They must be sooooo good!

And yet, because all the 'official' sequels were available to stream 'for free' to Prime members of Amazon, Paul and I were perversely - masochistically - tempted to tip our toes in the murky waters of these other movies.

Just to say we've seen (a selection of) them and survived...

But then again, life is short, and these are hours of our precious time that we'll never get back.

I applaud the filmmakers' enthusiasm, and by all means make these movies for your friends (I know I used to), but for the sake of global sanity don't foist them on the rest of us who are scratching around for decent horror flicks.

Fool me once, shame on me, try and fool me a dozen times, shame on everyone!