This Queen Thing
While away and sitting watching the TV as the lovely Cornish rain came down, we all (and I should clarify that The Mrs and I were accompanied by a friend on this holiday) became increasingly annoyed by the whole fiasco around the BBC's appalling misrepresentation of the Queen. (I should clarify, in the absence of sarcasm tags, that we don't actually think the Corporation has anything to apologise for.)
Let's look at the sequence of events: Peter Fincham shows a bunch of print journos some trailer footage for a number of upcoming programmes. It includes some clips of the Queen doco, including two which are actually in a different order than they appear in the full programme. Programme makers do this all the time - look at the trailer at the end of any episode of Doctor Who; I guarantee there's not a straight linear presentation of the clips in every instance. The print journos then go out and splash the shocking behaviour of the Queen all over their front pages, and the next thing that happens is that the BBC is pushed into an apology.
Now, I could be wrong, but I haven't seen any evidence that the BBC produced a Press Pack that said "See shocking scenes of Her Maj in a bit of a huff! Gasp as she storms out of a photo session like a C-List celeb with delusions of significance!" What I have seen is a lot of newspapers leaping to conclusions and then blaming the Beeb for their own lack of journalistic rigor.
The blame for any offence caused in this whole piece of non-news seems to lie squarely at the doorstep of the print hacks and their editors as far as I can see, and I think the Beeb should be ashamed of having rolled over about the whole affair.
A Holiday Obsession
Established readers will know that late last year I tried to get a Call of Cthulhu role-playing game campaign off the ground, but it faltered due to conflicting commitments. (But one day, dammit...)
Anyway, in the interests of at least getting me a taste of the horror, a few weeks ago I picked up a copy of the Arkham Horror boardgame, which by all accounts manages to retain some of the flavour of the RPG but in more bite-sized chunks. My thinking was that we could take in away with us and try to get in a session or two if the weather wasn't great or during the evenings.
Well, we managed to do that all right, in fact, rather more than that. I think we first played it on Monday night and then out came the box every following day of the trip. It's a great game, and in the mould where the early stages are all about preparing the players for the big confrontation at the end where everyone works together - a model I've always quite liked. Anyway, the three of us became quietly obsessed by it, and The Mrs has returned slightly more loudly obsessed. He's thinking of ordering one or more expansions, he's spending time trawling the game site to glean every possible detail and nuance of play, and yesterday afternoon he badgered me to play again now we're home.
Should I be worried?