Er... 1

Howdy folks. Well here it is, the first post. In homage to one of my favourite blogs (hell, one of my favourite places on the Web) I've gone with the same theme used by Nannyknowsbest. Down with the Nanny state. So, I suppose you want to know the point of this blog. Well I've noticed lately that nothing is ever f**king easy. Actually that's not true, I've noticed this for some time but recently it's been getting to me. For myself I hope this blog will be a useful outlet for venting my frustration at the fact that nothing is ever f**king easy and maybe I'll notice a pattern over time that will help me combat this fact, here is where I start fighting back! For you, the reader (this blog has a reader?) I hope my posts will be entertaining and amusing in the same way that you watch a Road Runner cartoon and smack your forehead at how dumb the Coyote is. Anyhoo all this whittering isn't really giving you much of a flavour of this blog's (soon to be) regular style of post so let's catch up on the last two days: (just before we do that you should know that I am an unemployed ex-student, qualified librarian and film archivist and do two volunteer jobs, one at The Living Archive in Wolverton, the other and The Projected Picture Trust at Bletchley Park, I am the Trust's archivist)

Yesterday:

Had a call at the end of last week at the archive from a guy who wanted to view some film, the idea being to see what he wanted to get put onto DVD. The conversation went well and I arranged to meet him on Tuesday. One question I asked is what type of film he had. Standard 8 he said. Darn, we've only got a useless, clapped out P8 at the archive, better bring my Siemens in. Arrange for mother to drop me at the train station, arrange to call ahead to be picked up at the other end. Realised I didn't have the archive's number in my new-ish phone so flashed up the website pronto just before I left and copied the number. Got to Milton Keynes and rang through, no answer, 7 times no answer. Was getting a bit annoyed but thought I'd walk it, not impossible with the projector it just feels somewhat heavier by the time one gets to the archive.
Got to Wolverton and the road to the high street was shut (turns out it was a gas sub-station that had caught fire.) The only other way is to walk miles around the other way. Called again and finally got through- turns out I'd copied down the fax no. by mistake. Anyway got picked up, the guy arrived and I went to put the film on the projector. JUST as I lifted the reel to put it on the spindle I noticed the spool's rather large centre hole and checked the perforations. SUPER8 not bloody standard 8. Now we've got a super8 projector there that can handle reels that size so I didn't need to bring the bloody projector in in the first place! Then the films turned out to be about four hours worth of holiday film, countryside, flowers, car journeys... YAWN! Nothing's ever f**king easy.

So today. I had one aim today, get to the Trust, clean lots of film and re-can them. Got there and found that finally the new magazine has arrived, only six weeks bloody late! So 10:30 to 11:30 was spent shoving copies of Rewind into envelopes. When that was done I went off with a view to cleaning the films. Juuuuust as I was about to start I heard voices coming along the corridor (shouldn't happen in our storage area in theory). Stuck my nose out and it was two members of staff from the Park. Lovely ladies they were (particularly one of them!) and they seemed most interested in our stores and what I was doing so I was only too happy to chat and show them round. They went off and I began cleaning the film. About an hour later Ken (our curator) came in looking rather worried and said he wanted me to get some particular reels of film together that he knew we had. Since I haven't catalogued the 35mm films yet this was quite a tall order but after two and a half hours of swearing at film cans and poor labelling I managed to find the reels he wanted. However, juuuuust as was about to start looking I had another visitor, another person from the Park responding to a security alert, some twerp with a ladder trying to get into the building (not me I hasten to add!) Had a quick look around with them but couldn't find anyone. By the time all this was done there was only about half an hour left so I went back to the workshop and finished up for the day. What annoyed me was that all I wanted was to get in there and clean film, I was so damn determined to do that and only that today and not get sidetracked, maybe I should have called this blog 'nothing ever goes to plan'? Ah well, it's called what it is and it's here to stay. So there.

Nothing's ever f**king easy.