"I assume I'm getting paid nothing?"

Location Hampstead Heath cafe | Mood Dramatically more positive | Date 21 March 2007
Filed in:
Author (full name): 
Franny Armstrong
Location: 
Hampstead Heath cafe
Mood: 
Dramatically more positive
Soundtrack: 
Posh people talking to their doggy woggies
Ailments: 
Dentist drilled wrong tooth (the one next to the one cracked in Nigeria)
Date: 
21 March 2007
Current silver lining: 
Signed up Future Archive Director

Fate has intervened to save Crude. I've been stuck in a terror tunnel as it gradually dawns on me how many elements we are incapable of doing. Like making animation. Or mocking up news reports. Or trawling a million hours of BBC archive.

But then a friendly local filmmaker, Bruce Goodison, called up out of the blue. We'd only met a couple of times before, but seeing as we practically live in the same house we'd always made noises about keeping in touch. I was just off to play tennis with my sister (part of the not-looking-at-computers-for-twelve-hours-save-the-eye campaign), so picked him up on the way for a game of trebles. He was fairly useless on court but turns out to be a dab hand at filming stuff to make it look like old archive. He's done any number of films where he's shot stuff to match a particular sequence that already exists or to look like beaten up old film from the 70s or whathaveyou. Signed him up to do Crude's Future Archive on the spot. "I assume I'm getting paid nothing?".

Continuing the "Am I middle aged?" angle, had a priceless moment when two women came onto the tennis court at Bruce's end and said something which caused him to double over with laughter. Apparently they'd asked why I wasn't in school and was it because I've got my exams. Ha ha eek.

Bruce also suggested I contact archive-maestro Adam Curtis to see if he has any tips for sorting through "all the media ever produced by humanity". Damn good plan, thank you fate.