Crude Diaries

Suddenly remembered Emily James as I was washing up for the first time in three weeks this morning. She's an indie filmmaker very much from the Spanner mould. Her film "The Luckiest Nut In the World " famously used animated singing peanuts to discuss trade liberalisation.

Am totally stuck on the animation script, so decided to try to do something - anything - positive and cleaned up three years of cat shit from my roof. Then started clearing the overgrown ivy with the thought of planting some veg up there. But as soon as the ivy went I could see a bloody great big crack in the wall.

Not been going too well with the animation. There seems to be a fundamental mismatch between the Spanner Films approach - "don't know how long it is, don't know how much cash we have, don't know what style we like, what do you all reckon?" - and the professionals at Passion who work with such things as scripts, storyboards, deadlines and budgets.

Been having lots of screenings of the Rough Cut to various carefully selected groups of friends & funders, with me scribbling hundreds of notes to myself and then re-editing stuff before the next one. Seems every other night another bunch of people spends the evening staring at the wall. (Looks great projected).

Rooney and his pals failed to wop Israel's asses in the World (or is it Euro?) Cup qualifier last night, not that I care. But it did result, as anticipated, in the first communication from My Certain Someone since our New Year's Eve resolution. Exchanging some flip nationalistic football insults set me off pining for some real exchange with him.

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.

Best Pal marched me off to the doctor after coming over to pick up her share of the organic veg delivery - how very neighbourly - to find me typing away with a scarf wrapped round my head blocking off one eye. I explained that the headaches get unbearable whenever that eye looks at a computer, so the interesting headgear is the only way to carry on working.

Slightly frightening that Crude pal Mark Lynas has dreamt up, researched, written and published a book, 'Six Degrees', all within the Crude timescale. Lizzie and I went to the launch in a cold church hall in Oxford tonight. Mark was doing one of his favourite slide-show talk presentation things - think Al Gore, but way bleaker - which I've now seen plenty of times, but never fails to scare the bejeezus out of me.

Lizzie and I have made up. She agrees that "a change in attitude is needed". And I said that it was the panic of steering the whole Crude ship on my own for two weeks that caused me to overreact (was that an apology?). Anyhow, we've renewed our vows to get the fucker finished. A good thought from the Guardian. Think there may be the replacement Crude title somewhere in the idea of "like there is no tomorrow":

Hilarious misunderstanding via text messages to and from New Zealand. My mum had been telling me about the emergency operation one of her alpacas (think llama) had been undergoing. I'd been telling her about the emergency operation my dad (her ex-husband) was about to undergo. Then I asked if she had any numbers for my brother , who is away on holiday, and I thought would want to know about dad's operation.