Archive for 31 January, 2009
Get your teeth into Being Human
Last night I stumbled across the first episode of Being Human on BBC3 and I’m hooked. It’s a quirky, dark, comic tale about a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost living together in a house in Bristol. If you liked Torchwood, Shallow Grave or This Life, it should be right up your street.
If you’re in the UK you can catch up with the first episode on BBCiplayer here and the content rich microsite is here.
PS What is it with vampires at the moment? What with the latest Underworld pre/sequel, Twilight, ITV’s Demons and the forthcoming Lesbian Vampire Killers, you can’t move for the undead. At this rate, they’ll have to bring back Buffy…
The naming of things is a difficult matter
I’ve been pondering recently – why do we have ‘shorthand’ names for some places and people but not for others?
At work, for example we have The Coffee Man, Sandwich Man (or occasionally Sandwich Lady), Sewing Lady and CityLink Man. Then there’s The Book People, who have cut out the middle man and handily named their business with the appropriate shortcut.
Everyone at work knows where The Octagon and The Chapel are, but we can’t come up with a better name for where Production sit than ‘at the bottom of the stairs near the back door’. I also don’t recall anyone coming up with a handy moniker for the man who delivers lunches for meetings or the cleaning company’s team leader.
At the stables, there’s The Back Lady (the equine physiotherapist, just back from tending the British mounts at the Olympics) and The Feed Man (the lorry driver from the feed merchants), plus Top Land, Bottom Land and Third Field, but the blacksmith is not called The Shoeing Man, nor the instructor The Teaching Lady.
Which reminds me of how the announcement of the arrival of The Sandwich Man can be a good guide to the culture of a business. At my last agency, the reception staff were ex-cabin crew, resulting in daily tannoys that ran (complete with authentic bing bong noise), “would all staff please be advised that sandwiches are now available in the café area”. At my current place, we get an all users email that simply reads ‘the sandwich man is here’. :-)
