Got up too early again. Planning to take the kids into town to get some much needed supplies. Mia wanted to redeem a voucher she had at Boots so we did that, then the kids and I did town and ASDA getting various bits we needed. Took Hattie down to ASDA and bought her some clothes, and gave Ted some money for video games for his birthday. He bought a copy of Nintendogs for his DS.

I bought a pair of Binatone MR 150 walkie talkies for £14.99 in ASDA with a range of 3Km. I've been wanting to buy some of this new breed of walkie talkies for a while now anyway, but coming up to the shoot they might come in handy for me and Becca, my 1st AD, to keep in touch. Or for her to keep in touch with her 2nd AD. Okay, they're cool and I wanted them.

Also bought some DVDs. I've bought a lot of DVDs lately, mostly because my loan came through, but also because Tesco and ASDA have some great cheap deals.

I've also ordered a phone for my office at work to use with an Internet phone station to connect it to Skype. It appeals to my sense of the ridiculous to have this phone, a Geemarc Mayfair replica of a 1960s black phone attached to Skype. I can receive incoming calls on it from my SkypeIn number (a London number as it happens) plus regular calls from my Skype buddies.

I also figure, slightly stupidly, that London based film companies might be more inclined to call me about my film on a London number... but hey, early days yet. :)

Generally speaking I had a nice Saturday, but my abcess is still throbbing. I hope the antibiotics start kicking in soon cos it's making me really ratty.

Second edit day.

Woke up this morning and the abcess on my gum is huge and throbbing. The antibiotics are not really doing anything. I would have thought they would kick in by now. Maybe they are bringing the abcess to a head, (ew) but my face is still sticking out like a wing mirror on one side.

Feeling a bit selfconcious about my swollen face. I avoided the weekly Friday meeting at school, and stayed in the studio over in Clifton Village and ran my class. I don't mind the students seeing me like this but I'm kind of touchy about my appearance anyway so I'm keeping public showings down to a minimum. My hair is kind of straggly these days. I wanted to grow it out and have a ponytail. Instead of having nice thick hair which bunches up into a nice neat tail, I have bits which hang down the side and the ponytail is a like a scratty ragged little spike poking out the back. I hate my hair. I look like a cross between Andy Pitkin off of Little Britain and... I dunno... just some old guy trying to look young.

I nearly went into the snazzy barber's in Clifton Village this morning and got them to cut it all off. But then I realised despite the fact it looks really crap I LIKE having long hair. It's more me. So I'll have to find a style or hair product which keeps my hair managable. I need hair advice. Maybe I'll go in there on Monday.

On the way home I get a call from Mia saying would I like to go to the big Tesco over in Midsomer Norton tonight? I say yeah sure, but not too keen to drive over there when I already spent an hour and half driving home. But when I think about it I'd really like to pick up some of those cheap DVDs they have over there, like £2.84 for some things.

We shop, we drop. I get a few DVDs and a new jumper. My old trademark fleece zip up cardigan is getting really old and ratty and I need to retire it. I now have a new trademark jumper, black with long sleeves which cover my hands and a high neck for those cold days. Looks trendy but is warm too. Will go under my coat nicely too. DVDs were "The Nutty Professor" the Jerry Lewis version, "Catwoman" with Halle Berry, "Spider-Man 2", "Porridge -The Movie", and season 1 of "X-Files" which is running out at £15.00 these days to my delight. Yay, I hung out long enough and it only took 12 years. When those puppies first came out I think they were about £100 for the whole season. But now the price is right.

Fell asleep in a paracetamol and antibiotic induced coma. I've been in low grade pain all day and frankly it's kicked the crap out of me.

First edit day. Spent the morning logging shots into Final Cut Pro, then lunchtime capturing the rushes into the computer. After lunch we started putting shots on the timeline. It all went very smoothly.

Apart from... waking up this morning the low grade toothache I was experiencing yesterday has flared into full blown toothache, the whole nine yards, swollen face, pain etc. Had to bail on the edit around 2pm to make a 3.45pm appointment at my dentist, the first such appointment for some years. Apparently I haven't been for so long that my dentist has retired. Now my dentist is not only younger than me, he looks like I could be his dad. He told me my teeth would be fine if I was about 90. Unfortunately I'm only 45. It's crunch time for my teeth, and that's perhaps a poor choice of words. I have to REALLY take care of them now or lose them. The bone support of my teeth is so bad in certain areas its really touch and go if I'm going to keep them. Wake up call deluxe. Plus I have an abcess on my gum the size of a walnut. Ow.

Limped home and spent the evening bouncing from one dosage of antibiotic and paracetamol to the next. Hopefully it's going to clear up real fast.

Getting ready for the edits starting tomorrow. Getting a little bit of toothache. And HSBC tell me that the reason the card worked temporarily was a kind of courtesy. The cheque wont actually be cleared until Thursday. ARRGGH!!!

Ah well I managed to give Mia a little money and we have a buttload of food in the house now, so we can last a day or so like that. I must admit being without a mobile or internet is kind of liberating. I mean intially when it's cut off it's like an arm. You wonder how you are going to button your fly with only one appendage... then you realise you were actually born with one arm so what the fudge are you complaining about, muddyfunster?

So yeah, big deal I can't make phone calls when I'm at home. I can't even charge up my emergency backup PAYG phone, so I have 15p credit on that till tomorrow. But yeah, doesn't matter. After a while you don'tmiss these things. Besides, as I always forget, I actually have a payphone outside my house. I now at least have a bit of change so I CAN run outside and call someone and say call me at home.

If I've leaned nothing else by being in this situation it's that you can get around anything if you have to. I've lasted for ages on no money, food, form of communication, and I've found a way to supply those things. It comes down to this, what are you prepared to do to keep things going? If you're out of options you're not trying hard enough. :)

Anyway, off to Christchurch Studios this afternoon. Got to see what kit they are setting up for me tomorrow. Wondering if I'm teaching the program or Will (our visiting lecturer) will be taking them through it. Time will tell.

Got lots of episodes of "Lost"and "CSI" to watch tonight so screw the Internet. We got what we need.

First day back in the office after the shoots. Wow. I haven't been as cold as I was yesterday in a long time. But we got the whole thing in the can.

As I was driving in to work this morning on petrol fumes wondering how far I was going to make it in before the dog and I had to walk the remainder and stay here until the cheque clears, I decided to check and see if my switch card was working yet. I pulled over in Tescos at Midsomer Norton and put it in the cash machine...

It was! I took out £10. I took out £50 in case I was imagining things. Oh my god.

Then I went a little bit bat crazy.

I've been without any money for so long, watching the petrol gauge more than the road, living on 8p instant noodles, duty free cigs I'm given and tiny jars of coffee... being able to get £50 out of a money machine in one go kinda sent me a bit nutso for a bit. I filled up the car till it was full. I bought a full trolley of shopping. I bought a carton of 200 fags. I ran into Tesco's carpark yelling "arrrrrrgh"! Such a release of pent up frustration and anger. Felt so good.

Okay so it went a bit pear shaped when I tried to pay my Telewest bill to get my phone turned back on, and my card was "declined". (I really HATE that word by the way. Can't they just call you DEADBEAT!!!! in front of everyone in the shop?) I was flummoxed. How could I use my card after weeks of it being trapped and now it's trapped again? Must call the bank tomorrow and find out WTF is going on.

As part of my shopping I bought Ted a game, Mario Cart DS, for his new Nintendo DS. I didn't really get him anything on his birthday, but I promised I would as soon as I got some money. I also said I'd pay half of the price for the DS so he had some of his money left over to buy another game. That really cut me up to have nothing for his birthday but I literally had no options. Never mind, he's chipper again now.

Ted's been having a bit of a rum time of it, having the teenage heebie geebies, they all get around 11-12 years old. Hormones kick in, notions of mortality bite hard for the first time. It's a rum time and I remember it well happening to me and my mum bears this out. Hattie went through the same thing at his age. I called his teacher and told her about all this and she's going to talk to the school counsellor. She's really cool, according the Hattie. Ted's happy about that.

With the phone and internet off Mia and I baked buns all evening till about 1am. Mia wanted to take some in to work and we arranged for me to give her a lift into work tomorrow to help with that.

Final shoot of the video project. Ted was feeling unwell so I took him into work with me. Got to the shoot a bit late as a consequence, I hate being late for calls but driving in from so far away sometimes early calls are a bit of a problem. I live an hour and a half away so generally I'm on time but sometimes it's difficult as other forces conspire to make me late.

Spent most of the day freezing my ass off out in the cold directing this nice subtle love story about saying sorry. The actors were great, and the students were really keen but our schedule was all over the place. We caught up by cheating it a little bit and did a number of really long takes later on in the day just to try and grab as much stuff as possible.

The PDX10 camera is a bit flaky and not really very good for sound levels, so you have to kind of wing it. Hope the sound matches the visuals, because I have a nasty feeling sound is going to be the worst part of these little films. We might get lucky but I suspect I'm going to take some heat for not making sure that was right.

We did some really cool shots and I hope it all turns out right. Not really thinking straight after nine hours out in the cold. We wrapped around 6pm and the light was gone but I think we got all the shots we were looking for.

Looking forward to tomorrow when I can veg out in my office doing menial techie jobs and boning up on Final Cut Pro ready for the edit.

Ooo, and my new Skype phone arrived. It's really cool. IPEVO free.1 is a Mac friendly Skype phone. It's about the size of a mobile with a little cable coming out of the bottom which plugs into a USB port. It's really nice. I spent about 45 minutes talking to my mum on the phone this evening. It was a long distance call but only cost me 0.012p per minute. It only crapped out once or twice, normal considering how we are getting used to that on mobiles. Plus I use my Mac wireless in the house. If I used a cable it might be more stable. But way cool. Oh and BTW I got the black one. :)

Seriously considering ditching the landline and using Skype. I also now have SkypeIn which gives me a UK landline number on which you can call me on Skype. It's a London number but hey, it's a phone.

Ah Sunday. Nice and easy day. Had a few chores to do but tended to skive off a bit. It's been a really tough week and I've got another shoot, the last one of the video project, tomorrow.

I am still really enjoying the video project, but I've found it a little bit frustrating directing. We've only had one day a-piece and that's not really enough time. I guess five minutes finished footage in a day is quite a high ratio, but sometimes we've had to compromise, and that bugs me. Okay it's only an exercise, but still. I got some good shots and I hope will prove my point that I can do this and should be doing this. We'll see when we're finished.

We got the first two edit sessions next week, so nearly there.