Monthly Archives: June 2012

Jun 30 2012

A letter to the Beeb

Dear BBC,

Please can you stop winding my husband up. He has spent all day looking forward to Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark on BBC One at 18.30. I understand that coverage of Tennis at Wimbledon is at least mildly interesting. I know that some people really care whether Roddick beats Ferrer. But he really wanted to see Indiana Jones (for the 200th time).

Our whole day has revolved around being in front of the TV at 18.30 only to find the tennis ongoing. Indiana Jones is such an obvious ‘sport finished early’ movie that if I had known the tennis was on I would have known to manage his expectations but to be honest I hadn’t quite noticed that Wimbledon had actually started.

Perhaps you could list such movies more clearly in future. Something like “Indiana Jones – ‘cos its cheap to show but only if the sport finishes early”. Something to think about during the Olympics perhaps?

Yours sincerely
Scifi wife

Jun 28 2012

What would you save in a house fire?

It started as a joke about the picture below – a very true image I must say – and progressed very quickly to a debate about what Scifi hubby would save if the house was on fire. His answer was not me, or the cat (not really a surprise about the cat) but his collection. Or to be more precise a £5 plastic Hulk figure that roars when you pull his arms.

I started out quite insulted that he’d choose the collection over me but at my thunderous look he quickly stammered that he was assuming I was already safe. Hmmmm! But let’s think this through a little more…

He has a whole room of toys to choose from. Shelves and shelves of comics, graphic novels, special oversized compendia, a row of glass cabinets filled with numerous black and white statues, busts, original Star Wars figures, space ships hanging from the ceiling on clear string, half a dozen Batman cowls, two mannequins dressed as Batman and Joker, original art from artists such as Simon Bisley, David Hitchcock, Adi Granov and Clint Langley not to mention the hundreds of signatures from celebrities including Stan Lee. Yet he chooses a £5 Hulk that I bought for him, before we were married, when we were very skint. So skint in fact that I’d said he couldn’t have it as we had to buy food. But I waited until payday and went out of my way to go back and buy it for him.

It’s quite sweet really. At least while I’m burning to death I can be sure he’s thinking of me.

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Jun 24 2012

When Scifi hubby drinks cocktails…

He’s home! The TV is officially back on 24/7 and only playing animation or scifi. But its good to have him back.

The added bonus is that he brought an old school friend of mine with him who we’ve not seen in ages. It turns out that amongst her many other skills she makes a mean cocktail. We started on sparkling rosé, then a jug of Mojitos, French 75s and Tom Collins’s. It does occur to me that there aren’t any scifi themed cocktails. There must be some recipes somewhere – ‘blue milk’ perhaps?

We had a BBQ with our cocktails and decided to play scrabble, with the addition of a new rule – all words must relate to scifi. Weirdly this worked quite well but was perhaps a little messy.

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Just don’t ask why Scifi hubby is wearing a dinosaur mask…

Jun 19 2012

A trip to the comic shop – on my own…

Scifi hubby is still away but his Previews order has arrived at our local comic shop. They would, of course, keep it a week or two but I thought it would be nice for him to come home to find a mountain of goodies waiting for him. So I nipped in on my way home from work.

Scarily they know me on sight now and instantly produced his order. They also know I don’t know a lot about comics so they don’t even try to talk comic stuff with me so we had a nice chat about the weather instead.

What I do love about this shop is that they have a loyalty scheme. Not quite on the scale of supermarket points cards or the Starbucks ‘buy nine get the tenth free’ scheme but I’ve never heard of another comic shop doing anything similar. Ended up getting £20 off the order today. Of course that probably just shows that Scifi hubby has spent a fortune with them in the last three months. Some questions are best not asked…

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A pile of goodies waiting for Scifi hubby

Jun 17 2012

Ten days with no Scifi hubby

Scifi hubby is on holiday for a couple of weeks without me so I’ve had a couple of weeks to contemplate what ice would be like without Scifi – I hasten to add I’m not dreaming about life without Scifi hubby, just wondering what it would be like if he wasn’t a scifi addict.

For ten days I haven’t:
Watched any Star Trek
Watched any Family Guy
Watched any American Dad
In fact I’ve watched no animation whatsoever ever!
I’ve not had to remember who wrote which Batman book
I’ve not had to try to remember which Batman Black and White statues we have, which a re due at the comic shop and which we still need to order
I’ve had no conversations about which comic hero you would ‘cliff, marry, or shag’
No one has sent art sketches I’ve needed to decide if I like enough for them to go on our wall
I’ve not bought hotwheels cars at the supermarket
Eaten any chips or baked beans (Scifi hubby’s staple diet)
Been to the comic shop

I have:
Eaten a lot of fish (scifi hubby hates fish)
Read a lot of books
Watched really rubbish murder mysteries on TV
Been for long walks
Sorted out the junk drawer in the kitchen.

Shh don’t tell Scifi hubby but crazily I rather miss it all. I was quite relieved when I got an email to say he’d bought a Jurassic Park dinosaur and then a huge pile of books arrived. Notice that I am a very well trained Scifi wife – the books are on a clean surface, on a teatowel and are now locked in his study where the cat can’t get to them.

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Roll on Wednesday when he, and the scifi madness, is home. I can’t wait.

Jun 3 2012

A night at the museum

It’s been a quiet week from a scifi perspective. Scifi hubby is away and I’m at a conference for work. It’s funny how rarely scifi comes into ‘normal’ conversation. However I did find myself doing something scifi hubby would love…

I attended a drinks reception/party at a natural history museum. When I received the invite I thought that was quite a cool venue but assumed that we would be in a reception room somewhere. I really wasn’t expecting that we would be in the main gallery of the museum and be able to visit all the exhibits. So whilst most people danced the night away, I went off exploring the almost empty museum, glass of wine in hand…

Firstly I wandered around a huge exhibit on plants of the world. Giant triffid type things behind glass, the history of tobacco etc. All rather dull really but slightly creepy with no people around.

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But then I spotted a dinosaur. Now I’m not a huge dino fan but hubby loves them. He would love to bring them back Jurassic Park style but I’m not convinced that’s such a good idea. He’s dragged me around dino exhibitions wherever we go, and just loves the life size vegi-saurus (I haven’t a clue what it is) that lives in our local park.

It turns out that the dino exhibit is one of those new, interactive, noisy exhibitions that walks you through a maze of glass cabinets, bones, fake jungles, dino nesting sites etc. As you walk through you trigger various sound and lighting effects. This may be the point at which to mention that I can be quite a scaredy cat and jump at the least little thing. I’d also had a couple of glasses of wine, it was very late at night and there was NO ONE else in the exhibit.

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At least that means there wasn’t anyone to see me as I carefully put my head around corners to see what was coming, jumped out of my skin in the ‘jungle’ when I saw something moving towards me (it was me – in a huge mirror behind the trees), spent quite a lot of time imagining the T-Rex coming to life and chasing me passed the Triceratops and almost screaming when I encountered the friendly chap below (he’s a giant ground sloth apparently).

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As I emerged a little shakily from the exhibition the band started to play ‘I will survive’. Who said irony was lost on Americans?!