Month: June 2009

I know I’m often posting comments my daughter Iona makes, but this is another good one.

Today Iona’s rabbitting on, unabated in the back of the car about this, about that, about the next, loudly (she doesn’t seem to have a volume control… shame). Finally having enough, Magnus declares that if she doesn’t keep quiet he will sell her.

“You can’t do that Daddy.”

“Why not Iona?”

“I don’t have a barcode.”

You can’t fault her logic!

That’s it. Done. Finished. My CBBC script entry has been duly sealed in brown, BBC addressed envelope and is now just waiting for a trip to the not-so-local-these-days Post Office for a stamp of the right value.

I’m not pinning any hopes on the competition as I know I am away for the masterclass date, but, as the BBC seemed to think it was worth entering anyway, just to get my work infront of the judges, then who am I to question? And it’s all experience!

Finally – “Dead on time”, or “murder in the office”, or as I’m now calling it “A Corporate Murder” is finished and away to the editors. NOTE TO SELF: NEVER leave custom work that long ever again before revising it!!

However, with that revision out of the way, that makes three small group dinner party games in the process of being edited, which means I know my next few weeks will be stacked out with formatting work!!

So what now? Well, I’ve proofed Kathy’s latest game -well done Kathy – great work!! So all that is left to get done today is reviewing my CBBC competition entry “Scalygreen”.

And as I seem to be on a “name changing” day, I’ve elected to change the name of this one too, to “the last dragon keeper” which I think describes the plot a bit better and sounds slightly more interesting for a children’s TV program.

By the end of today I hope to be able to report that my office based murder mystery will be finished. It’s proved harder than I thought to bring the 19 player game originally written for a large entertainments company (I’ll mention no company names for obvious reasons) down to a regular 6,8,10 and 12 player game. I hadn’t realised the game was so entwined. Next time I’ll remember not to procrastinate for over a year before I revise a custom game!

After that, I guess it’s back to reviewing “Scalygreen” for the CBBC competition, and then on with “A midsummer Night’s scream” which has sat untouched for over a month!

In the middle of all this, it looks as though I’ll be reviewing the SEO issues with Red Herring Games which, for no explicable reason, has fallen from page 3 to below page 12 in the Google rankings overnight!

The first rehearsal is now over for Murder at the Manor, with the main rehearsal taking place on the evening of the 11th. What I really need to do now is gather the rest of the props together ready for the evening, after all, time is marching on, and it’s on the 16th! (Which means I have just under 2 weeks to get everything in one box ready to go!)

Thoroughly enjoyed meeting Jeannine Ridher for the first time. Jeannine is a professional actress and has done screen and radio work as well as being involved in the local operatics society for 45 years. What a fantastic voice and personality! She’s making a great Agatha Crusty for the evening too!

Jeannine also happens to know some local radio contacts and so perhaps that might give me a lead in to radio script writing… who knows?

Oh, I must admit, Iona tickled me this morning. We were hanging out the washing, and she, at age 4, insisted on helping. She decided to tackle the socks. Reaching the last four brown socks belonging to my son she holds them aloft and says (in a very derisory tone), “Mummy – you’ve made a mistake with the washing!”

“Oh”, says me, “What’s that?”

“These socks are meant to have stripes! You’ve washed them completely out!”

Kids!! Honestly – you’d think I dyed absolutely everything that went in the washer!