February At Last!

It's no exaggeration to say that it's a real relief that February has finally arrived.  Whilst I'm not one of those people who hates the month of January simply because it has the misfortune to come directly after Christmas and, more often than not, features some of the worst winter weather, this year it seemed to go on forever.  Maybe it was because I went back to work too early, or perhaps it was all the problems I had with the garage over my car early on, but January just seemed never ending.  But finally we're out of it and into February - another frequently reviled month.  However, the change of month gives the impression that the year is at last progressing, that we're going somewhere.  All too often, January feels like an overlong introductory sequence in a film - we just sit there aching for it to be over and for the action to start.  Well, hopefully now the action will start.   From my point of view, at least, February holds the prospect of taking some time off.  Just a couple of days around my birthday later this month, but welcome nonetheless.  Last year I did a fifteen week stint from September until Christmas without taking any leave and regretted it.

But what else have I got planned for February, other than spending a couple of days with my feet up eating toasted cheese and bacon sandwiches?  Well, I've obviously got another couple of stories planned for The Sleaze and I'm hoping to finally get around to reviewing more of the Italian exploitation films I watched on DVD over Christmas, not to mention another couple of instalments of 'Forgotten Films', this time covering some unjustly neglected cinematic gems rather than crud.  I'm also intending to start putting together some audio material for the first in a new series of The Sleazecast.  As I've mentioned before, I'm hoping to radically re-style the podcast for this year's run.  In non-internet activity, I'm hopeful of making some progress in reconstructing my model railway.  I've got an idea for a new layout plan that will eliminate the troublesome lifting section and allow me to make better use of the space in my spare room.  So serious am I about this project that I've taken the unprecedented step of buying some layout planning software, with the intention of creating a proper scale track plan to work from.  So, there you have it - February, a month of progress!  Oh, and before I forget, I had a couple of interesting hits on The Sleaze over the past few days.  For the first time ever I recorded a vi st from Fox News - US readers can expect to see an 'exclusive' Fox report on how a British man received a sex offender's hand in a transplant.  The other noteworthy hit was a lengthy multi-page visit from Hat Trick Productions, producers of Have I Got News For You.  Surely they can't have realised that their brand of clapped out Private Eye 'satire' has finally had its day and they're going to start cribbing my material instead?