Diary

"I hope there's no more war in Iraq"

Location On the balcony of hotel, overlooking downtown Amman | Mood Tired and tiresome | Date 10 August 2006
Met up with the family from yesterday this morning. Filmed a great interview with the mother (Rasmia) and then were happily sitting drinking tea when something kicked off between Rasmia's brother and sister and a full-scale slanging match ensued. Never quite established what that was about.

Dropped down dead when he heard the news

Location New hotel room. Too many bedbugs and not enough AC in the last room. | Mood Blank | Date 8 August 2006
Franny, and our fixer, Khulood, interviewing Iraqi widows on the streets on Amman<

"Nooni"

Location "Yahoo 24" internet cafe. Don't try the 'cappuccino'. | Mood Grumpy | Date 8 August 2006
Nooni finds splendid new filming position

Best ever team

Location Dingy hotel room. No AC, no lock, bedbugs, gotta move. | Mood Winding slowly into second gear | Date 7 August 2006
Crude Team with taxi Have assembled a crack team with miraculous speed: Ra'fat (Palestinian), fixer. Well connected & persuasive.

Eyes Wide Open

Location Wobbly table outside coffee house, downtown Amman | Mood Eyes wide open | Date 6 August 2006
Amman, Jordan.

Wonder how much oil goes into one tray of airline food?

Location Plane to Amman, Jordan | Mood Nostalgic | Date 4 August 2006
Not sure what exactly changed - perhaps panic that we haven't even found our final character yet - but we're heading out to Jordan, despite the ongoing war. Lizzie's a few aisles away being tortured by a screaming baby. I have the headphones and laptop. Sure is good being the boss. Some pretty profound life and death stuff has been going on post Crude-Camp-with-Mark. Like when someone is diagnosed with terminal illness and gets six months to live - or if they survive a near-death experience - they often say their whole perspective changes.

Too many options

Location At my desk in office in attempt to bring order to chaos | Mood Chugging along | Date 3 August 2006
Slightly confused by too many options after my week lying around with High Tide, so sent a couple of emails to our 'Crude Insiders': the 180 darlings who invested in or are working on Crude. Couldn't believe the response - tonnes of great ideas, tonnes of links to further thinking and tonnes of "good on you, keep going". What a fantastic, unintentional side effect of the "How we gonna fund this film without giving away the rights?" problem.

The heatwave continues

Location On the floor in the office | Mood Brain-exhausted | Date 2 August 2006
The heatwave continues. London's response: buy more air conditioners. I've spent the last five days lying on the floor with High Tide Mark, doing pilates (him), eating ice lollies (me) and both of us trying not to turn the electric fan on (seems inappropriate somehow). We are attempting to nail all the arguments/positions/key points to include. Extremely glad we decided to, as Mark has demolished many of my favourite ideas. (The Sweden no-oil-after-2030 is a red herring, apparently.)

Which Iraq war story to choose?

Location Sofa again. Springs coming through. Torn apart by cat scratching. Will I still like the threadbare look once the Crude millions come flooding in? | Mood Yearning for domesticity, terrifyingly | Date 25 July 2006
Real tears are dripping onto my laptop typing this, as Emma Thompson has just found out that it's all been a big misunderstanding and Hugh Grant isn't married after all. This is extremely worrying and not just because of my history of electrical equipment and water.

Big Oil in the family

Location Dad's house in the woods in Oxfordshire | Mood Hopeful | Date 23 July 2006
One good thing about my sort-of-boyfriend's government killing hundreds of innocent Lebanese, is that I didn't have to blow out my dad and stepmum's 20th wedding party yesterday by being in Jordan. Not that I would've felt TOO guilty, as my dad scarred me for life by missing most of my childhood birthdays cos he was away filming important documentaries in difficult countries. Revenge is best served 25 years cold.