Things I've Learned This Week

1. Where Istanbul is.
2. The futility of procrastination.
3. The ability to make a fire that lasts over 60 seconds is located on the Y chromosome.
4. Lovely old people are better than chocolate (but not to eat).
5. Mean old people can be super scary.
6. It's difficult to write a school report for a kid that's really nice but completely hopeless at your subject.
7. Making a film is really really hard. (Watched Lost In La Mancha with Terry Gilliam & Johnny Depp, I mean, not with them, I watched it with Jude but they were in it).
8. Making a film is especially hard if your film has half the budget it needs and the actors don't show up on time and you're filming next to a military bomb-testing site which wasn't supposed to be operational but clearly is and a freak storm washes away not only your equipment but also the landscape you chose for the setting and your star gets too sick to sit on a horse and the whole film is him on a horse and you're legally not allowed to replace him. (Seriously...watch the documentary- it's brilliant, unbearable viewing).
9. "dinnerladies" is all in lower case at the start of the world's greatest sitcom because Victoria Wood originally thought it would be funny to write an "er" parody set somewhere banal like a factory canteen.
10. Lambaste means "Beat or Reprimand Severely" and John Cabot was a Tudor explorer. God bless the Guardian crossword.
11. I really really really do need that chocolate bar after an audition.