Monday, December 17, 2007

A View from a Hill

Last night I was watching a ghost story on TV called A View From a Hill, which was based on a story by M. R. James and tels the story of an archaeologist travelling to a remote mansion in the middle of the English countryside to look at the collection of artifacts found by the father of the current squire. However on his way to the mansion the archaeologist breaks his binoculars and borrows an old pair from the squire, which were made by a local occultist. When he looks through them at the ruins of an old abbey on the nearby Gallows Hill, the ruins appear as the original intact building. However, he soon comes to discover that there is something else there, that dosen't like being noticed. It was a great show, actually, and genuinely chilling. It's been a sure sign of Christmas over the past couple of years, the ghost stories season on BBC Four. During the 1960s and 70s it was kind of traditional for the BBC to show adaptations of ghost stories at Christmas (almost invariably adaptations of M. R. James stories) and they've been trying to bring them back in recent years, and very successfully too, in my opinion. I think they're great.

I managed to get into work fairly sharp today, which means that I've worked up more time so I can leave early on Friday. Apparently they're having a 'Feast Day' sometime this week, basically the bosses will be bringing in a lot of food for us to eat during the day. They had it last year and it was pretty good.

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