'Waking the Dead'

Now I love a TV murder mystery but during the middle of last week the back yard of the Pie 'n' Mash started to look like a scene from one.

We've lived here 5 years now and we've only just got round to this bit of the building - which when we first moved in was almost entirely covered by a walk in fridge-freezer - a useful resource for scaring people at parties, but not much else. Obviously having the yard dug out has reminded me of all the dust, mess and pain of when we first moved in - but at least this time I'm not that involved. My friend Andrew (who's a garden designer) is doing most of the digging.

The other reason I have been thinking about when we moved in a lot is that I have finally managed to edit the short film I wanted to make of Len, the Pie 'n' Mash's former charismatic owner. When we bought the shop we underwent a fairly a-typical exchange process, part of which included me spending a very enjoyable day with Len filming his routine cooking the pies etc. that he did each day. He's actually a great 'presenter' of what to him was a daily routine. Unbelievably after finally finishing the film (and posting him a copy thank God) I lost the whole lot when the 'Pie 'n' Mash back up disc' packed up ... Apparently if I want to go through 1000's of unlabelled recovered files it's in there somewhere but so far that's a level of super sleuthing I've resisted.

At a friend's 50th last weekend I actually met the editor of 'Waking the Dead' my favourite murder-mystery, I think he thought I had something of the pathologist/stalker about me as my questions moved out of the territory of polite fan into obsessed person stuck in a long film edit with an extra-ordinary memory for cuts and techniques witnessed during what should be casual TV viewing.