I didn't have much to say, but the fact I've written a blog is newsworthy. The site move is over: back-end storage is set for the the next five years. So comment away.

Title say it all. BBC report here.

A nameless critic, not far from these pages, believed they'd need to suffer brain damage before they could watch Primeval, so I thought I'd stump up five reasons why you don't need to stick your head in a shredder to enjoy it:

1. A body of England's, breathing English air.

If you're British, then the options for home grown action-adventure were limited to Doctor Who and Spooks before Primeval came along. So it's nice to have another drama rooted in our own culture that isn't pants. I appreciate this is a worthless argument for the international audience, but it is important for the home crowd, .

2. It's all round family entertainment.

I remember aged nine being bored by a Doctor Who. In the absence of the Daleks, I interrupted my parents viewing by noisily playing with my toys. I don't have kids, but I don't see Primeval falling into that trap: the monsters are never off screen long enough for an ADHD tot to throw a tantrum.

In fact, there's something in it for everyone (except the moody teenager). There's Mills & Boon romance for the mums. There's Hannah Spearitt dancing in her underwear for Dad. There's slapstick and yuck jokes for the kids, and more sophisticated one-liners for the adults. Of course, accommodating everyone means its necessarily drawn with a broad brush – but if it doesn't get the big audiences, then it won't get the big budgets and the show wouldn't be viable. This is TV for the X-Factor audience; I'm just surprised we don't get to vote off ARC members. So don't be the kid who refuses to eat the Christmas cake coz it's got cherries in it. Suck it up, and enjoy.

3. Connor & Abby

Take this moment from S4E1, where Connor and Abby are in a car being chased by a Spinosaurus.

JESS (over the radio): Maintain direction for 300 yards. Take the second turn on the right.
CONNOR (to Abby): Second turn on yer-
ABBY: I'm not deaf Connor.
CONNOR: Sorry.
ABBY: But thanks.

Spearritt delivers her line with enough sarcasm to make it funny on its own (think Indiana Jones vs Marion Ravenwood). It's also a sly dig at those shows where a private ignores an order from his boss's boss until his immediate superior has repeated it - even when all three are in the same room. And Abby's touching "thanks", reveals genuine affection – the kind of understated expression of repressed emotion that could have come from the pen of Alan Bennett (for Brits an expression of affection is a cessation of hostilities, and if that's too subtle for you then see point 0).

Admittedly Connor started out as the kid brother the Chuckle Brothers disowned – but any critic sharing nationhood with Adam Sandler has no legs to stand on here, and my Mum works in a school and the kids do love it (so see point 2). Andrew-Lee Potts is brilliant at it, too. That said, the character has grown: he's progressed from total incompetency to mild incompetency; and any day now he's going to step up to "only occasionally" incompetent. Let hope he doesn't do a Greg Sanders and become terminally dull as a result, because his ineptitude is closer to humanity's norm than the flawless action hero. The dumb things he says--just before the segment quoted above he chastises Abby for driving to close the kerbs--are the dumb things we all say. And his cheeky grin is to die for.

4. The writers have done their research.

As you'd expect from the team behind Walking With Dinosaurs, every dino that turns up is real (and sometimes the writers can't resist giving the accompanying lessen in paleobiology). But the anomalies are on firm ground too; ridiculously large magnetic fields are one of the ways time travel might be achievable. (You've seen Carl Sagan's Contact, haven't you?) They may not call them such: but Primeval's anomalies are wormholes with event horizons, and they're more plausible than anything in Stargate or Doctor "whadayamean-a-ship-that-can-cope-with-rentry-can't-cope-with-a-little-storm-and-dont-get-me-started-on-sharks-that-live-in-the-air" Who; in fact it might well be the hardest SF on telly at the moment.

5. The monsters.

Okay, this is the biggy. I can't think of a single American show with so many effects shots. And those of us who grew up watching bubblewrap painted green know how lucky we are to see dinos bounding round a mall – even if the polygons can be counted when the monsters stay in view for more than a second. On top of that, the "batosaur" is the most original monster I've seen in years; genuinely iconic.

Frankly I might have to admit defeat and say Primeval is brain damaged. It doesn't matter, I'd check my brain at the door and just watch the monsters. If Primeval get's canned, there'll be nothing on telly that can replace it. CSI: Cretaceous? Purlease. The 'raptors would eat Grissom for breakfast.

As TJ notes, every Christmas special that's not a direct rip off of A Christmas Carol, still sees some curmudgeon having their cockles marinated in Christmas spirit and then warmed on the hearth till they glow with love and joy. But if I were in charge of the networks, things would be rather different; here's five delights you might unravel on the Christmas day, if the schedules were a la Spod:

1. Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. A soldier returns home to find his fiancée has been unfaithful. Benson and Stabler intervene to discover the girl has been raped (by her father). However they persuade the soldier to go ahead with the marriage, and raise the child as his own. And in a final, supernatural twist, it turns out rapist has had a vasectomy.

2. Casualty. A pregnant, East-European, brussels-sprout picker gets trapped in a cowshed by a blizzard. While inside, a panicked cow head-buts the woman, knocking her out, and triggering the onset of labour. Holby's ambulance crews fight through the snow to rescue the woman from enraged cattle and deliver the child. Unfortunately. the newborn has suffered an injury which prevents it crying.

3. The Vampire Diaries. Damon and Stefan are busying rounding up a herd of weresheep that have overrun Mystic Falls, when a text tells them a new doppelgänger has been born. They chase down the infant, with with Damon taking along a werelamb to torture.

If Ian Somerhalder isn't avaialble, then this can be run as a Wallace and Grommit/Shaun of the Sheep cross-over Christmas special, with Wallace and Grommit taking on the roles of Damon and Stefan. No script changes would be necessary.

4. Top Gear. Messrs Clarkson, Hammond and May are given £10,000 to buy a super car, and tasked with delivering a bag of chocolate coins, a deodorant aerosol, and joss stick to a christening. The journey is interrupted by a series of challenges, and, to make it harder, each presenter is forced to carry a camel in the car. Before the first challenge, Clarkson has used the deodorant on his camel, Hammond has eaten his chocolate coins, and James May's camel has eaten his joss stick.

5. The Shield. This is where it turns nasty. A gang boss discovers a rival has moved into town, and decides to go after the rival's newborn son the only way he knows how: by killing every infant in the 'hood.

During the episode Dutch also kill an infant; just to see what it feels like. And for light relief, a couple are encountered dressed as the Adam West/Burt Ward Batman and Robin, with Robin heard to say, "Holy innocents, Batman!"

In an unrelated sub-plot, David Marciano's character "Steve" has to help an officer of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police track down a gang of bank-robbing Santas. The wheelman's son proves to be a weak link. (Any similarities between this and the greatest ever Christmas episode are entirely intentional.)

So that's my five. But even if it doesn't turn out like that, Happy Christmas viewing.

The boiler has finally stopped leaking.

It began-
Well, it began back in April, before the move. The leaks were one of the hold ups. But it was fixed, supposedly. And to be fair, there weren't any drips while it was heating hot water.

Then, at the beginning of October, an engineer came to service it. He switched on the central heating - and wushh!!! he was instantly drenched. Since then British Gas have been back and forth, mopping up the leaks. But last Friday they seem to have got it sorted. There's still a £200 bill, but from now on the only costs are the premiums on the service contract. And, looking at the amount of rust inside the boiler, they're gonna be cheap.

Other, than that I've been busy, trying to work, and seemingly getting nowhere. I've knocked out a few quick blogs:

• some ruminations on the future of books,
• a rant about the UK welfare debate,
• some reflection on my inability to write emails,
• and an argument for better privacy on the web.

That should keep y'all busy.

I'm now settled in to my new home and back on line. So what's my new place like? Well the previous occupant's furniture concealed some serious mould. It's appears the bathroom is leaking through into my bedroom/office. Its even got under the carpet. And there's a separate strain top and bottom of an exterior wall, which I'm hoping is condensation related. It's far worse than anything I ever saw or experienced as a student. So I've spent a fortnight stripping wallpaper and sanitising fungus, and am now living with the windows wide open in a grey plaster box, unable to push my furniture against the wall. Oh, and I've only got half a curtain rail (now fixed). Meannwhile my ISP fluffed the move, so it's taken three weeks to get back on line. (Something about an email from my telco not being sent to my ISP.) I fluffed the backup plan for my blog, and my other hosting account seems to have died (hence the missing icon). Both, now fixed. Anyway, yesterday I read an article saying that at the end of every day you should think up three good things that happened to you during the day. I managed two.

I'm moving house on Wednesday, so--depending on how long it takes my ISP to sort of the internet--I'll be gone for a few weeks. Keep well, all.

I knew blog docking would be tricky - I expected to take a year or two rebuild and settle. But I've already upped and moved; peripatetic – that's me. My blog is now at www.1000kindsofrain.com, where I can customize and tweak to my heart's content. (The site is slightly broken, and far from finished; but that's just a metaphor for me. :lol: ) In fact I might change backend hosts again--I'm on a 30-day free trial, and I'm not entirely happy the provider--but the domain should point at my abode for the next couple of years.

So far you've missed:

• My usual introspective ruminations on a girl with a Danish flag.

• A summer pastoral, which will test your knowledge flora, fauna, nephology and the English language.

Out of interest, how many people have the capacity to follow a blog (via blog reader, or mail software, or even twitter) and how many of you don't know what an RSS feed is?

Somebody I respect* recently said something complementary about me. Yeah, my first reaction was to splutter, too; it seemed as absurd as picking a thistle from a patch of weeds and saying, "that's a nice flower". Then I started thinking if might actually be true, which made my life seem an even bigger disaster. :( So I had a mope, and shed a tear or two, and listened to Fumbling Towards Ecstasy. Twice. Then I put the whole episode in perspective. :lol: But one thing's clear. It's time I grew a little taller. I've loved this place to bits. But even at its height I knew I ought to get a more accessible blog where I could post BIG THOUGHTS(TM) and have the world ignore them. Fast forward several years and I'm still here when the community that made it so great has fled (with respect to those who are as tenacious as me). So I'm gonna push upwards. But this is not gonna be goodbye, I really will come back (*cough* *Auntie* *cough*) to post reviews, look at pictures of Laurie Grace, annoy TJ, etc... I can't even swear I won't post another blog here. But for the moment, my main posting will be on 1000kindsofrain.wordpress.com. No registration is required to pick holes in my surreal-mythopoetic-eccentric whines, so y'all're invited. :)

* Inasmuch as I respect anyone - ask me what I think of Einstein. :lol:

While packing last night--no, I haven't yet moved--I found a page of scribbles scratched out during a John Peel radio show. For those who don't know, John was the DJ of the twentieth century; he balanced confabbled delivery and comically inept manhandling of the DJ's desk with octaves of musical taste and peerless support for new bands – every room in his home was filled to the ceiling with demos.

To be honest, I couldn't always get my head into Peely's shows. But this sheet must have been from a night where we gelled as I'd filled a whole A4 page with band and album names. To my shame, I've acquired none of them. :(

However I have, this week, joined on line "radio station" Jango. Jango plays tracks to match your taste – or lack there of. I started it with Sarah McLachlan and it's now playing a game of battleships with my playlist. It has just sunk my Smashing Pumpkins. Damn. One more to it.

Because Jango tries to find similar artists to those you like, there is a lot of dross needing to be banned or skipped--who the hell are the Indigo Girls and why does the world think they're a good thing?--but I've made several discoveries, like The Drowning Crib. And like an electronic John Peel it keeps chucking in music by upcoming talent - of which I recommend Neraida's Out the Box (go here because Jango can't be relied upon to play the title track). The chorus is a musically naive--the world doesn't need more teeny block chords--but the opening and recapitulation are ethereal genius, both musically and lyrically, and the lyrics of the chorus are great. It's a song that has lodged in my head where its ousting a certain Natalie Imbruglia track, which, okay, I did encourage Jango to play excessively.