HELP!

Not a blog as such, in fact it's now a cry for help.
I need somewhere to live, preferably in Ayr, as that is where my new job is, but happy to live anywhere on the bus or train route.
Do you, or any of your friends, have a spare room for a poor ex leper?
If not, have you a copy of the Ayrshire Post handy?

It's yesterday once more

Throughout my childhood, it seemed school holiday telly meant one thing and one thing only. Old black and white serials on BBC1.
The finest example of this genre being The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe.
As sure as day follows night and the Weather follows the News, it would be on. Until that is, the early 80's. Suddenly grainy old black and white serials fell out of favour, and the yoof went off in search of The Kids of Degrassi High and The Red Hand Gang-although I'm not sure if that series was ever shown in Northern Ireland-leaving poor old Robinson and his man Friday to gather dust in a French film library.
As touched upon on an earlier posting, until the age of 7 I grew up with just the one channel, and tv during the day was a treat. And I loved Robinson Crusoe.
And now, it's back, back, back! Thanks to the good people at Network DVD, those grainy images are available whenever you want them.
And surprisingly, it's as good as it ever was. The opening scenes with the ship being battered by huge breaking waves, as one by one the crew are sent overboard or crushed to death are worthy of many films made today on multi million pound sets.
Given that the last time I watched any of this footage was 25 years ago, it's comforting that so much is still familiar, as if it was only a week ago. At times the narration jars, but maybe it's just his accent. And the music, oh what a sound. Haunting and beautiful, the hairs on the back of my neck tingled as the sweeping orchestral score soars and swoops like a seagull on the wind.
Sometimes it's easy to see the past through a haze of rose tinted nostalgia. But sometimes, just sometimes, it really is as good as you remember.

i-play u-play we all play

I'm a terrible Luddite with modern technology as opposed to the

Spinning Jenny I suppose, but in the last few years I have gone wireless, I do love a podcast, and I have an mp3 device so that wherever I go I can listen to Mark Kermode's film reviews and Danny Baker's All Day Breakfast.
Hell, I even have a myspace page and this blog thing. But today I downloaded the new super duper BBC iPlayer. I think. For a long time nothing seemed to be happening with it. I've long been a fan of the BBC Radio Player, and seldom a week goes by without me using it, so imagine my excitement when the iPlayer came online. No really, try and imagine, in fact, in much the same way the Story Makers might put it, Imagine, imagine, imagine a slightly excited Me. I got my secret codes from the BBC, I put in my account stuff, and I installed the"an end to missing 2Pints of Lager on BBC3 misery"* device and now I wait. It's downloading now, and it's taking forever. I decided to download something I had already seen, so that should the whole thing not work, I wouldn't mind too much.
So, should Holby City appear somewhere on my computer, I shall let you know. My hopes aren't high though. My computer is a bit old and knackered, and the software is a Beta program, but fingers crossed.
Still no sign of a job though. If you know of anything... I'd quite like to move to Ayr if that helps.




*actually, because of the unique way BBC3 works, I believe it takes a supreme effort to miss 2 Pints as it does appear to come round with alarming regularity, and normally as a double bill! Make it stop.