Alastair Craig

[alastaircraig]

Some months into the dissociative haze of early parenthood, I looked at this bath book (which resolves its core “missing dad” drama on page 3 of 6) and thought “ah, this shares a structure with Little Women”.

It was the moment I realised the fog had lifted.

[alastaircraig]

BREAKING OLYMPIC NEWS

Jamaica has a bobsled team.

[alastaircraig]

“Doctor Poo”. Is this anything?

[alastaircraig]

In times of trouble, remember that there is always beauty to be found in the laughter of a baby, the setting of a sun, or your local cinema's seating map for its one and only daily screening of Melania.

[never-obsolete]

Microsoft Productivity Pack for Windows (1992)

[alastaircraig]

It’s thrilling to see Frodo betrayed by the ring in a moment of panic.

It’s EVEN MORE THRILLING to read the book as a dull middle-aged dad and learn he actually tumbles from getting too rowdy with an encore performance of a jolly thirteen-stanza tabletop jig, written by Bilbo Baggins and heavily implied to be the alt-history precursor to the nursery rhyme ‘Hey Diddle Diddle’. 🤘

[alastaircraig]

Before you scroll on to more grief and rage, take a moment to lock eyes, and perhaps share a brave smile, with this Tom Bombadil distractingly modelled on Peter Jackson.

(From John Howe’s wonderful art book “A Middle-Earth Traveller”.)

[alastaircraig]

I just remembered that I briefly co-ran the internet’s top-ranked Family Matters fansite in the early 2000s.

To this day I have not watched a single episode of Family Matters and have no idea if anything on there was true.

[alastaircraig]

[alastaircraig]

I know new Doctor Who divided fans, but can we all agree the new theme tune was a banger?

[alastaircraig]

A gentle reminder that you are loved, you deserve love, and Muldoon canonically survived Jurassic Park in the early ‘90s continuation comics. Have a great day. ♥️

[alastaircraig]

Who’s dreamier:

Greg from Greg’s Anatomy or Les from Les Misérables?

[alastaircraig]

"Hey you, get that steel drum out of my - uh - secret Dantooine base."

[alastaircraig]

Doctor Who is ruined.

This new fellow is making a mockery of the character, never mind the pivot to flashy action.

Unless the BBC returns to the old ways, this show will be cancelled and forgotten by 1968.

[alastaircraig]

When the first YouTube video was uploaded 20 years ago, audiences were said to have fled from their computer screens, believing real elephant trunks to be barrelling towards them.

[alastaircraig]

In memory of Douglas Adams, who died 24 years ago: a glorious anecdote about his terrible writing habits from his friend Stephen Fry.

As a writer who grew up hero-worshiping this man, I find a strange comfort knowing his perfect phrases, his seemingly effortless linguistic gymnastics, were the product of gruelling trial and error.

Had he lived, he would have given so much more to the world. But I suspect he would still be working on, or finding great excuses to avoid, that tenth book.

Douglas’s writing routine was painful in the extreme. Sue Freestone, his publisher at Heinemann, would come round and beg, often almost with tears welling in her eyes, for pages from his printer. Douglas would hurl himself downstairs to the coffee machine, hurl himself back up again, thump to his desk and sit in front of the computer. After an hour or so twiddling with the screensaver, the wallpaper, the title of the file, the placement on the desktop of the folder the file was stored in, the formatting, the font, the size, the colour, the margins and the stylesheets, he might type a sentence. He would look at it, change it to italics, swap the word order around, get up, stare at it some more. Hum, curse, growl and groan and then delete it. He would try another sentence. He would look at this one and now perhaps give a little puff of pleasure. He would stand up, stride across the room and hurl himself down to the kitchen, where Sue and I would be gossiping and smoking around the table, and make himself another incredibly strong coffee.

‘Dare I ask?’ Sue would say.

‘Going well. I have the first sentence!’

‘Oh.’ It would be perhaps July with the new novel already overdue the previous September. One sentence written so far. Sue would smile tightly. ‘Well, that’s a start at least …’

Douglas would nod enthusiastically and fling himself back up the stairs, coffee dripping in his wake. We would hear the feet thump across the floor above our heads and then an agonized cry of ‘No! Hopeless!’ would tell us that the proud first sentence was not, after all, up to snuff, and a banging on the keyboard would register its angry deletion. An author’s day is tough enough, but the writing life of Douglas Adams was excruciating in a manner quite unlike anyone else’s I have ever known.

- Stephen Fry, The Fry Chronicles

[alastaircraig]

Mortified to learn I missed the 25th anniversary of The X-Files season 7, episode 19: “Hollywood A.D.”

How did you all celebrate this year?