My Teddy Will Protect Me,

...and unfortunately I'm not talking about a tall, masculine hottie who accepts the wild things which go on in my imagination. Perhaps one day. 

Anyway, today my flatmate and I had a lengthy chat about the film The Woman in Black and which bits scare the living crap out of us. Since I was already scared of the dark, it was NOT a clever idea to watch such a creation, because ever since then I have been more on edge than ever. This is the reason I would probably struggle to live alone.

I'm going to define the terms of being scared of the dark. I'm not scared because there is a lack of light in the room - I'm scared because my spidey sense or whatever you want to call it likes to tell me something is there, or rather my imagination wills me to believe that something is. 

My peripheral vision is not the best. In an exam where a boy was kicking his orange trainers under his desk, I would have sworn on the Bible that there was a ginger cat walking around, because my over active imagination likes to go cloud watching (or rather, blur watching - making shapes out of the flashes of colour I see) and it's really annoying, and can freak the day lights out of me. 

For as long as I can remember, I've always had a night light on my landing, or I sleep with the backlight for my iPad or my laptop on. I very often have soft acoustic, classical or jazz music on too, just to keep me calm. 

After dark, I really have a problem with windows, mirrors and our bathroom's skylight - plus any funny noises that sound like banging or footsteps. Horror films NEVER FLIPPING HELP!, but some of them aren't really horror films. 

Anyway, after mutual admittance of still being nervous in our house after dark, I was putting away shoes in the hall closet, when I noticed our security light go on outside our front door - twice. 

The first time, I calmed myself saying it was just the fox/badger/mole thing which got into our rubbish last night (we still need to sort out the garden, so it would make sense that it came back, since the split bag is still there) but when it came on the second time, that was scary. 

Since we'd been watching a film, Eeyore and Teddy had been downstairs with us - there is nothing like being comfortable - so Stevie still had Teddy in her arms and the strawberry condom that we had just found at the bottom of our cleaning cupboard in the other hand. Slowly, she approached the door, making to open it. 

"STEVIE! Leave the chain on!" If there was someone behind there, or even a fox or something, I didn't want it in our house! "Wait, wait, I'll get a stick." After checking behind the cupboard door - because I had gotten paranoid by now - I grabbed the solid hose of the end of the hoover and readied it for hitting the fox or whatever came through the door! BUT THERE WAS NOTHING THERE! The looks on our faces were pretty priceless though. To be fair, we're the sort of people who have to have the curtains in our living room closed after dark and I tend to sit with my back to the wall or I get a little edge-y. 

Anyway, in all the panic, I've gone and left Eeyore and my blanket in the living room. A rescue mission would involve turning on all the lights in the house, but I'm not sure I can leave him down there alone...

Nothing News,

Until I moved house, I was pretty oblivious with the news, because I don't have BBC News as my homepage any more, I didn't own a radio and I pick up the Metro or the Standard, but then I just don't really read it, since nothing really draws me into it. When I moved to Roehampton though, I became more into listening out for what's going on, because we have a radio in our kitchen which we have playing BBC Radio One pretty much all the time. I've just turned it off though, because I don't need "projections" of what the closures of HMV stores and Blockbuster going into administration is going to do to the film industry. 

What's basically being said is that film industries rely on the idea that they are going to make X amount of money from DVD sales, and the lack of stores on the high street offering these may reduce the amount of DVDs sold. If I'm honest, I think that is a dreadful pile of poo, because if you WANT the DVD and the DVD is still available through other channels e.g. Amazon then you're more than likely to still buy the bloody thing, right? I'm not saying it's an ideal situation, but it's not quite the dire straits that they're implying. Also, one of the reasons that rentals with Blockbuster are declining is because of the existence of other companies e.g. Netflix and Lovefilm who offer roughly the same service, but you don't have to try and run to the shops after work. Either they are delivered straight to your door and can be posted back, or they are just there on the internet in a beautiful, easy to search online library. The issue for Blockbuster is that they were overtaken. They could have, if they had realised how lucrative this business idea was, still been the big name with it, but Netflix and Lovefilm have developed their own reputations now, and would almost certainly be seen as the better alternative as they've had years to build, while Blockbusters have been declining.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not Amazon's biggest fan - the fact that they make the KDP website so difficult to FIND let alone actually NAVIGATE is something which is particularly annoying about them - but the fact is that when it comes to expanding the business to be more convenient for it's customers, hell, they do that better than anyone. I don't know if any of you have seen these new Amazon lockers - I know there's on in West 12 and Hammersmith Bus Station in London - but they're fantastic. If you live somewhere that isn't great for post *cough cough* Elephant and Castle *cough* or the package that you want would be too big to go through the letter box, you can just get them delivered there and pick them up in a couple of days. Simples. 

One of the things which did worry me though was that if there is seen to be a decline in DVD sales, then film makers will have to look for other sources of income to foot the costs (investors won't put money into it if they won't see a return after all) so whether we like it or not, I guess that means there's going to be more product placement in films from now on. Great. As if it wasn't weird enough to see James Bond drinking Hieniken. What the heck is going to be next? It just reminds me of a line from a truly underrated film called Catch and Release with Jennifer Garner in it where the guy describes movies as Sell, sell, sell, but let's kid ourselves and call it art, but advertising is Sell, sell, sell, and we all know that we're going to hell, so here's a big fat check to smooth out the ride. 

Anyway, with that and the horse meat scandal (which let's face it, most people are only throwing a tantrum about because they didn't know, and if you buy things like Findus anyway the only surprise should be that there's actually meat in it at all) I don't know why I'm paying attention. I don't know if it's that bad news sells better or that there's nothing happy going on in the world right now, but it almost makes me want to bake an absolute --- tonne of cake, take it down to the BBC and London Standard offices and tell them to cheer the hell up. 

Tell me something nice for once. Stop giving people reasons to think everything is crap.