it's been a funny old week. Started off Monday with a trip to the Doctors and a, not entirely surprising, diagnosis of Type2 Diabetes. After absorbing that blow, it was off to get a new gizmo for recording blood glucose levels, a nifty finger pranger, and a large bottle of pills.

I seemed to have struck gold with my doctor not only being a woman around my own age, but one who has type2 diabetes, and recently went through gastric bypass surgery to deal with her morbid obesity at the same level as my own. So I can talk to her and know that she understands, with acute intensity, everything I'm going through, and have gone through most of my adult life.

so I've been recording every bite of what I'm eating, took my measurments, *faints* and did the finger pricky thing twice during the week. I'm sure there'll be a ton of adjustment when I finally get the call to visit the Diabetes Clinic, but in the meantime I contacted a local support group and look forward to monthly meetings to answer questions and get the latest information on my condition.

I also made contact with Lesley Marshall of the New Zealand Society of Authors, with a view to becoming a member, and attending their monthly meetings. I feel a bit of a fraud, as I haven't written anything 'original' in over eighteen months, and my manuscript is still waiting to be 'accepted' or 'rejected' for publication in the UK, but maybe if I surround myself with those that are quite a bit more successful and dedicated to the whole process of writing than I am, right now, then it will ginger up my muse to return and pick up where we left off.

might even allow me to finish all those outstanding stories waiting in vain to be completed.

all that will have to wait until I can throw off the most disgusting head cold that developed yesterday...haven't had one of these in awhile, and it sucks donkey balls!!

S3 of Primeval will be starting in the UK soon.....am I excited?.......not even remotely. It will be fun reading what other fans think of it, but I've pretty much jumped the shark on that series - dinosaurs notwithstanding.

in fact tv at the moment is one big yawn. I have enjoyed rewatching the x-files late at night, and I find time to watch Desperate Housewives and Lost on mondays and wednesday, but once you count them out, the rest is totally naff. I've even been going to bed around midnight, which is almost heresy, given before I left Wellington I was regularly staying up to 2 or 3am, but still not achieving very much.......now I'm getting up at 7.30am *shock horror* but still not finding my groove.

I think I just need to give myself some more time to adapt to the new environment......how much, I have no idea.

Well, that might be pushing the envelope...but for this fangirl, it was definitely a moment to squee.

I had an email yesterday from a London based musician called Jer Randall. Jer and his brother Chris are the boys behind the songs and music in the 2001 movie Phoenix Blue starring, you guessed it, my current actor, James Murray.

Because of my interest in the film, I had tried to find a soundtrack for it, but drew a blank, other than snippets of Steven Parson's lovely intrumentals, a solo video clip and one single cd of Tailspin(through Amazon), by Jer and Chris plus their band Widescreen. Other than ripping the music off the soundtrack, there appeared to be no other avenue to hear the music sans movie.

Then yesterday I get a brief email from Jer himself. Apparently he read my review of the single on Amazon and got in touch with me.

*squee*

I didn't believe it at first...but he wrote back and directed me to his myspace site..

http://www.myspace.com/greyghostwidescreen

where there is some of his more recent work. How cool is that!!

Now I can add Jer to my list of backroom boys that I've been in contact with since my Primeval fandom jumped into high gear. I've 'talked' via forum and LJ with Steven Savile, author of the first Primeval tie-in book, chatted on myspace with one of the lads in the publicity department for Primeval S2, and now made contact with Jer Randall....only two degrees of separation from Primeval through James Murray/Phoenix Blue.

It's a small world....

*squee*

Review: Shadow of the Jaguar by Steven Savile (Titan Books)

Disclaimer: I make no claims to being a professional reviewer, not even a competent one. I'm a fan of the first two series of Primeval, with a particular liking for the character Stephen Hart. That said, I've tried to give a balance review as much as possible without entirely spoiling the plot.

The Book:

Nicely presented scaled down hardback, unusual choice in cover design colour(green with red lettering), but eye catching with a crisp image of Nick Cutter(Douglas Henshall) wielding a Japanese sword with a Smilodon baring it's fangs behind him on the front, group shot on the back. No equivocation about it being a tv tie in and also hints at whose perspective will tell the story.

The Blurb:

A delirious backpacker crawls out of the dense Peruvian jungle muttering about the impossible things he has seen... A local ranger reports seeing extraordinary animal tracks and bones – fresh ones – that he cannot explain....

Cutter and the team are plunged into the hostile environment of the Peruvian rainforest where they endure a perilous journey towards something more terrifying than they could possibly have imagined....

My Review:

Hmmm well.....I have to say that the descriptions of the Peruvian jungle, its wildlife and the general climate were enough to put me off going there for life. The depiction of the expedition to investigate the strange going's on just drips with sweat, bugs and blood. Buckets and buckets of it.

This is one of the most blood soaked stories I have read in a long time. It quite surprised me, not expecting things to get quite so R rated in its depiction of shredded bodies and wholesale bloodletting by the prehistoric creatures prowling the jungle.

I surprised me only for as long as it took to remind myself that the tv series hasn't exactly been squeamish about throwing around body parts and blood itself....it's just done off camera or within the PG rating of the prime time viewing, rather than in the graphic way it was portrayed in SOTJ.

It made me really wonder how Cutter and his team actually survived at all...but that's jumping ahead.

The story is supposedly set sometime after the second episode of season two as it mention the raptors(yes I know they're not but humour me) in the shopping mall and the worms in the tower block. Jenny is very much in evidence but I did wonder about her being sent into this situation. She's PR, not diplomatic relations, but hey, she's accepted as part of 'the team' so she had to be there. The core, Cutter, Connor, Abby and Stephen all dance around each other and work reasonably well together with only brief lapses into angst of the whole 'affair with Helen' scenario, although there is plenty of foreshadowing and it keeps within the canon of the series as regards the banter between the characters.

It does veer off at times into purely gratuitous scenes as remarked by other reviewers. I thought the flying suit by Stephen and the walkabout by Abby and Connor not entirely out of context as they were supposed to be doing touristy things, and the 'cloak & dagger' got a bit tiresome as it only held up the story rather than moved it along. Each of the characters were given a chunk of the story to take center stage in – Jenny with the hospital, Abby with the sewing kit, Stephen and the tracking, Connor and the village, but on the whole they were all given fairly equal 'screen time' throughout the story. In between the action bits were very well researched informative bits – like one part where Stephen explains how he does the whole tracking of animals thing – and there are others spread out throughout the text which imparted snippets of hyper-knowledge and made it more interesting. Alongside those were a liberal use of scientific terms for the creatures without any elaborate explanations, so I'll be looking some of the references up to satisfy my own curiosity.

The last few chapters raced by, the action thick and fast albeit a little improbable. I really didn't grasp the why the 'thing controlling the others' creatures felt the need to use them for wholesale, senseless slaughter, or get a grasp of what it was or where it came from, the past or the future, and against the odds they were facing, no one should have survived the rope bridge, let alone the temple.

I also tended to skip past the scene of Stark getting Jenny – it smacked of these first person virtual reality video games my sister plays ad nauseum or maybe a Rambo movie.

As the story was rubber stamped by the creators of the series, one can only boggle at what they'd do if they didn't have to make the series suitable for minors to watch.

Conclusion:

SOTJ is an often violent, flesh rending episode of a Primeval gone horribly pear shaped, to quote Connor. Steven Savile has done a superlative job in getting the reader right there beside the characters, suffering the heat and general ickiness of the environment, of portraying just how out of their depth they truly are beyond the boundaries of the civilised English countryside.

Will I read it again? Probably not for a little while. Would I recommend it to read? Certainly, if you like the series and the characters and don't mind a body count to rival a Die Hard movie. The author drops you into a world that is entirely alien to most of us, makes you sweat along with the characters, gets you good and filthy, scares the bejeezus out of you then gets everyone back – well, nearly every one back – safe and sound in time for the next episode.

I only hope they all had some serious, post traumatic counseling afterwards – they sure would have needed it.

Oh, and Lester gets some wonderful, snarky lines to utter from the safety of his pin striped suit.

Firstly.....Happy birthday Rosemary x x x x x Hope you have a good one. x x x x x.

Secondly..ah heck..can't be bothered with secondly, thirdly or the others.

I'm still steaming about the news released by the producers of Primeval, series 3. Despite all the teasing at the end of series two, and getting our hopes up that somehow, someway, they'd write a way for Stephen, or Stephen in the guise of another character, would be returned to the 'team'......instead they announce that everyone else is back except James Murray....their reasoning that his character had no more reason to be there after the revelation of Stephen's affair with Helen Cutter.

Hell and damnation...they did the same with series one...teasing us with the build up of a relationship between Stephen and Abby, right up to within a few minutes of the end of the final episode.

Then, because of the real life bts relationship between Hannah and Andrew, and no offence, but few off screen romances translate very well to on screen, evidenced in series two between these two...they decide that the Stabby is not working *blinks* and decide it's time to off Stephen because of an affair he had with his friends ex wife eight years ago??

Never mind that the affair was long over and Helen had been missing for those eight years, and never mind that Nick, her husband, had already moved on and was falling in love with Claudia....they decided to make it the be all and end all of cliche'd angst, making a mountain out of a mole hill and effectively killing off Stephen because of it, as well as ending any hope for the fans.

I can forgive writers if the progression is a logical one, and I can understand that from an actors point of view James was happy to have more to work with in regards the angst between Stephen and Nick, and the interaction between Stephen and Helen....making him more interesting (or more stupid, if you believe the critics and some fans)....but it's still not reason enough to give him redemption through heroic sacrifice, a promise of a return in some form...then to snatch it all away for no good reason at all.

It sucks...and makes for a great many very unhappy fans.

I can only hope that James Murray is now inundated with offers of tv and/or film work, enough to keep him on our screens long into the future.

Of course, he could just be looking forward to being a father in June, with plans to be a house husband when Sarah goes back to work on her new series in September. Either way, he'll be missed from Primeval, his character mourned, but also immortalised in fanfiction for a long time to come.

Well, I reckon life, the universe and everything is conspiring against me.......

On my current plate I have.......

One - chest infection.....after a week of mouth ulcers, I get this little bug on friday night. Pretty much lays me out for the weekend, but I still manage to take my eldest to her job on sat at 5am, and pick her up again, drop my youngest down to her weekend job at QE2 park, before dropping the eldest off at a birthday party at midday.  I then collapse into bed.......someone else collects my youngest in the afternoon.

Two - unwanted boyfriends - continuing the saga of my eldest and her ridiculously old(at 32) trucker/biker boyfriend - she phones up twenty minutes before we're supposed to be at an appointment for her knee on monday am to announce that said boyfriend has put his back out and needs to get to the doctor.  I end up taking said boyfriend, my eldest and myself - hacking small pieces of my lung out - up to Team Medical, then sit there for an hour and a half while they poke, prod and inject said boyfriend to get him back on his feet.  My eldest's appointment has to rescheduled for the next day as I can't prise her off said boyfriend.

Three - unwanted ex husbands - the continuing saga of the custody court case over my youngest, who really really doesn't want to go down and visit her father anytime soon, and with the latest information regarding his stability and association with his sister, seems fit to tie us up in court for a few months more.

Four - juggling appointments - previously mentioned physio had to be rescheduled, then had a call to say my eldest's year 12 dean had an accident on the weekend, and she had to schedule for later in the week. Then my eldest phones up to say that aforementioned boyfriend will need to go to the doctor again tomorrow.....at which point I said I was taking her to her physio, and if he happened to slide into the back seat, he could go up and see the doctors then.  At which point I find out he doesn't have any money for his prescription......after pointing out that this is not her problem, that she's not old enough for all this, and he should call his own parents to help him out....I gave up.  I'll be picking her up tomorrow morning, and I'm sure he'll be along for the ride.

Five - my mum is threatening to call the doctor on me if I don't stay in bed...........

Six - my favourite actor/character has just met an incredibly messy end in the Finale of Primeval, series 2.  I'm so depressed.

oh, and Seven - as if that isn't all enough to contend with, my TOTM appeared for the third time in two months, proving that menopause sucks.

I think thats all for now..........I need to lay down, I can hear mum coming down the stairs..........*sigh*


  

Yup....well......nearing the end of my so-called holiday week.

what a joke.   Here I was.......both of my children out of the house for a week, even my mother on holiday up north and out of the way, just me left with sis and dad and all the time in the world to catch up on what needed catching up on.  The whole daughter situation had been resolved before she went to Oz, and I was back in my happy place.

So....the holiday??  let's see.......all started last week when I went to the Doctors on wednesday - been having some problems with my back - again - so.....

wednesday(last week) - Doctor
thursday      - physio for said back - get accupunture
friday            - drive youngest and mum to airport for weeks holiday up north (2 and half hour round trip)
saturday/sunday  - drive eldest back and forth to work 
monday(this week)   - drive eldest to airport  for weeks holiday in Melbourne (another three and half hour round trip - had to be at the airport 2 hours early)
tuesday       - another physio - accupunctured again
wednesday - dentist visit for preliminaries of a root canal.....nerve too sensitive so drill and fill and prescibe antibiotics. Have to go back in Feb for the real deal *help*
thursday(today) - physio again - more accupunture,this time it hurts.
friday             - wow...nothing planned today, which means I'll be painting again.....unless.... (pleaserainpleaserainpleaserain)
saturday       - collect youngest and mum from the airport
sunday         - collect eldest from airport
monday(next week) - physio
tuesday - have to organise stationary lists for kids back to school in approx ten days.
wednesday(next week) - doctor
thursday - resign!!!!

*hits desk forceably with head*

I guess you could say - at least I'm keeping busy

Oh, and inbetween all this, Primeval started it's Season Two on Saturday, which meant I've been practically living on the Unofficial Forum and posting a ton of reviews and stuff, as well as getting my sticky paws on a copy of the episode and helplessly drooling at the wonderfulness that is JAMES MURRAY.............*wibble*

Episode two in a few days, and I am a happy fangirl.............

Wonder if I'll be able to fit in some writing in there..........*scrabbles about for a spare hour or two in amongst the chaos*

Is it still January??

Goodness, I'm so bad at this.

In mitigation, things on the Primeval front, have been happening thick and fast, and I've been rather caught up in all the latest developements.

Season two is set to start in January, although the date is a bit fluid at the moment.  There's several 'Official' sites, but still only a few 'unofficial' sites, which is good, as it concentrates the information availlable and keeps the fans localised.

Just preordered the season two DVd from amazon, and the associated novel by Steven Savile. It'll be interesting to see how well both do, and whether that affects the  promise of a season three.

Still beavering away on my current Primeval fanfic - Hard Light - which has truly exploded into an epic. I am on the last couple of chapters, and will almost be glad to sign it off, it's grown so unweildy.  The fanbase for Primeval fanfiction, at least for the het variety, is small at best, and strangely adverse to giving feedback.  Maybe the new season will spawn more authors and new stories, one can but hope.

My Peter Pan stories still generate interest from the fan base, so that's heartening, and I still intend to finish my 'flying boy' epic before the end of the holidays, certainly before the end of January.  I originally wanted to finish it before the end of December, but health issues have come up that preclude that.

I have to have a root canal in early January, and this week my back has started to play up, especially at night. If it continues, I'll be looking at another back operation, but this time either through the public system (God forbid), or privately (its only an arm or a leg!!).  In the meantime I have an impressive array of medication to help manage the pain, so much so I'm sure if you shook me I'd rattle!! *LOL*

Also, on the health front, I'm swimming three times a week, and dropped two kilo's in a month. I can only hope the downward trend continues, as my future health hinges on it in more ways than one.

My girls have been wonderful, and we're looking forward to as good a Christmas as we can make it. The weather is holding up, and fingers crossed, will hold for the next week. 

Oh, and the Gisborne earthquake?  It was a real rock-n-roller for us here in Wellington. Made the xmas tree wobble and sway, and kept going for the longest yet.  For the poor people on the East coast, it caused a ton of cleaning up and insurance claims for twenty seconds of 6.6 on the geiger.  Let's hope that's the end of it for the time being.

Merry Christmas to one and all....and I hope you all have a safe and happy New Year. 

oh, and a couple of avatars to illustrate my current obsession with Primeval and All Things James Murray



if you like them, feel free to snag and decorate the pretty...

kindest regards


Louise

Well, it's officially my birthday - and to give myself a present I created a new site dedicated to my latest crush.

http://peterpan-movie.co.uk/Primeval/JM/index.html

My darling sis got me the Primeval DVD *luvs* and I've been busy trolling Amazon for more of his works.

*sigh* charging up the credit card with blissful abandon.

Ain't obsessions grand!!

Now, if only Jeremy would get off his pretty taut tush and do another movie/tv series/photoshoot, my day would be perfect.

cheers all

Or several very good reasons why I'm writing short fic in this fandom.

Primeval Photo Album on Facebook

Oh, and I'm now on Facebook. (why? Because a good friend invited me, and I thought I would)

*ticks off fingers*

I'm now on :-

Bebo
Myspace
Facebook
Wordpress
Livejournal
Yahoo Groups

as well as creating/maintaining/updating five websites

*phew*

No wonder I don't have a social life off the web.

cheers

x x x x x