Ahh, I am blonde again! I think I've even outdone myself this year for the largest number of different combinations of hair colours and styles over the course of 12 months - and only 7 of them have passed so far! I shall be curling it soon as well. I'd have done that today except the dying wore me out. If only there was a way to dye your hair which *didn't* involve sticking your arms up in the air for an hour, applying dye, washing it off and drying it. Hmm....
I don't know what's the matter with me today - I've been completely living in the past. In the past, and in a televisual way. Some of the contents of this entry won't mean much to anyone outside of the British Isles but.... I've spent the day reminiscing about old TV logos, jingles and the days of schools programmes gone by. It all started last night when ITV went funny for a few minutes during my call with Y and we proceeded to spend the best part of an hour discussing our favourite channel break downs and oddities on satellite and cable.
This morning I was trying to find some channel fault screens to send him in an email to annoy him and somehow stumbled upon this site. To begin with I looked through all the channel fault signs and oddities that have popped up during transmittions over the years, but then I found the school's programmes section.
It wasn't about the programmes themselves - it was about the little bits between - you know, the channel idents with the clocks and so on. They don't have those any more because it's assumed teachers just record all the programmes and show them at their leisure, but for me they were one of the best parts. The excitement of the disruption at school, getting taken from our classrooms for just half an hour, walking single-file to the library or other TV room, wherever it happened to be and all sitting down with a buzz of excitement in the air, while our teachers would hiss, "OK, settle down everyone, Stop Look Listen is about to start!"
Ahh, happy times. School's programmes: The only good part of school.
Of course, when I was very young, school's programmes were on BBC1 and ITV rather than BBC2 and Channel 4. That changed as I got into middle school (yeah, some of the south named schools differently to the rest of the country while I was at school) and then as I got to about the age of 10 they developed my all-time favourite between-programme music on Channel 4 school's. There used to be 4 ITV logos spinning round in a circle with great music, which would be replaced for the final minute with a single ITV logo in the middle of a clock with a different tune. You know, bizarrely last week I had the clock tune in my head but couldn't remember the other one.
Today? Today I put that right with downloads ;)
Go here and download The Journey and Just A Minute :)
Anyway, one site led to another and I found myself here. By this point, I was in my element. I get bizarrely fascinated by old channel idents, logos, jingles and especially things that go wrong. I've worked my way through about 1/10 of all the links there and I can't wait to browse through the rest. I even found a site dedicated to fans of the Squarial! Result!
When I'd had my fix of old TV stuff I did some more sorting out. I found all of C's letters and put them into a new folder. There was one picture of T*ggy amongst them which I sneered at, but reading the letters themselves made me feel kind of strange. They kind of reminded me that despite all else that happened in the summer if 1999, however depressed I was, there were good parts, too. There was a clipping about the eclipse amongst them. That made me giggle by itself. The arrival of my Babes In The Wood Samantha Janus poster today completed my trilogy of things from summer's gone by.
I wonder what the weekend ahead holds. Today I have actually started to finally feel a little better which means I will have a LOT of emails to catch up on as well as other bits and pieces - but i have the feeling that my feet will be firmly planted in the past for most of the weekend.
I wouldn't have it any other way.
Temporal disruption approaching, team! Back tomorrow :)
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