My JDOCD suffering wife can not, of course, resist anything connected with Johnny Depp which includes the rather second-rate movie The Astronaut’s Wife and I stumbled upon the book (pictured) this morning, obviously picked up second hand when she was in town yesterday.

Leaving aside the story and the quality of the prose – which as I have no intention of ever reading it will always remain in doubt – the book really does have a somewhat miraculous genesis. On the front cover, which you may just be able to make out, it claims:

Based upon the motion picture…

On the back cover however, are the words:

Now a major motion picture…

A bit of a paradox then this book.

There have, sadly, been two rather nasty accidents in the last two days. Yesterday – two light aircraft collided near Coventry killing all on board and today a coach left the road near Alton, tumbled down an embankment and ended up in someones garden. One man has died as a result and many are injured.

I happened to be watching a BBC TV news broadcast not long after each of these tragedies. Following the air collision in which, I believe, 5 died, the newsreader was apologising for not being able to interview the paramedics on the spot. Tonight, following the coach crash, they were apologising for not being able to get live TV pictures from the actual scene.

When did this happen? This is the kind of journalism that belongs in the Rupert Murdoch arena. It’s tabloid or it’s Fox News (OK I know that’s the USA but they thrive on this sort of thing). We are being apologised to by the BBC News team for what? Not showing us the bodies? For not seeing the blood? Because they were unable to show us injured and deeply traumatised people struggling to crawl out from the wreckage of a coach?

I came across this image today while in town. I really wanted to get further away and show the whole of the vehicle it adorned but sadly it was parked so close to a wall that I could only get the main image and then, only at an angle.

So – to explain. The image was printed on the side of a DHL courier van. Just this picture and the DHL logo as I recall. Close up, the pair of female eyes peeping through a letterbox looked wet, as if she had been crying.

I actually walked past the van and then started to ponder just what the intent of this image is. My first reaction was that this woman is so frightened of the man from DHL she has to peep through the letterbox to check it’s not him before opening the door. There again, maybe she can’t get the door open and is appealing to the DHL man to call a locksmith. Perhaps she is trying to say that she has been tied up in her hallway by a gang of thugs and needs help. Or maybe she is in love with the DHL man and doesn’t trust what she may do if she opens the door to him. I guess she might just be very short and can’t reach the door handle.

Whatever it is supposed to mean it doesn’t exactly inspire me to use DHL the next time I need a courier.

I feel sure that if you can remember the TV series ‘Blake’s 7′ then you most probably have fond memories of it. It was, on balance, an interesting mix of adventurous television making on a very low budget. In fact, I well recall a comment made, I believe, by the producers that a single episode of ‘Blake’ had about the same budget as a ‘Star Trek’ coffee break.

So let’s see. What do I remember. I recall flimsy sets and even flimsier acting; grandiose title music; perhaps one of the first series where the writers felt free to kill off main characters; at least one whole series of ‘Blake’s 7′ with no Blake, or, for that matter, only 6 of them (I believe); the irascible ORAC; Servalan (who could forget her or her haircut?) and, of course, Avon – to mention just a few.

I remember being struck at the time that this disparate group of so-called ‘freedom fighters’ throwing stones at the evil ‘Federation’ seemed far more interested in treachery and deceit towards their fellow travellers than they did about liberating the galaxy. But it was good fun even if it seemed to totally lose it’s way after the first series.

But Blake fans everywhere will either be thrilled or appalled at the news that Sky television is planning to remake them. To quote:

The satellite channel has given the green light for the development of two 60-minute scripts for a “potential event series”.

Yes – that really does say “potential event series”. Sounds like ‘Federation Speak’ to me.

(If you happen to be a true ‘Blake’s 7′ fan then you must check out this site from Steven Locke where he appears to have re-created just about every Blake aspect in Lego. Some people really ought to get out more).

I was skimming the BBC news website this lunchtime when a headline caught my eye. The average home, it said, owns 4.7 televisions. On reading the item it isn’t about television ownership at all – it’s an interesting piece about the links between consumerism, social attitudes and the new “therapy culture” which promotes simple misery to depression and mental ill-health.

If I am supposed to feel miserable because instead of 4.7 televisions in my house I have just the one then I am obviously missing something. To be honest, I sometimes feel miserable because I’ve got one at all. If you sit in front of the bloody thing on an average evening, switch on Sky and browse through the programme guide, the feeling of misery gets more intense with each passing page. It’s not just because absolutely none of it is worth wasting my time on. It’s more that as a so-called civilized society we have become so culturally bankrupt. The vapid output dreamed up, no doubt, by the vacuous legion of first generation media studies graduates is so stunningly awful, unengaging, uninspired and dumbed down that I am surprised the whole country isn’t on Prozac. Or perhaps it is and I didn’t notice. Prozac just might make ‘Deal Or No Deal’ bearable.

I recall, a long time ago, reading that the average household owns just 11 books. At the time we owned around a couple of thousand which equated to a large village full of houses where no books would be found at all to maintain the balance. Our single television suggests that the guy down the road must have at least 8.

I am beginning to think there is no hope.