Hammer House of Horror

Last night I was watching Hammer House of Horror on TV. This week's episode was called "The House That Bled to Death". It was about a family that move into a normal looking suburban house, where a murder was committed several years previously. Of course, it's not long before the family are plagued by strange and gruesome happenings, culminating in a memorable set-piece where they are hosting a children's party, and while all the kids are eating, a pipe bursts and sprays blood all over the table. That sequence was nominated as one of the 100 Greatest Scary Moments in a TV poll a few years ago. The episode itself is basically like The Amityville Horror compressed to about an hour. After that I watched a couple of episodes of Tales of the Unexpected, in which a nervous businessman (played by one-time Doctor Who Peter Davidson) who waits for a visit from a call girl in a hotel gets involved in an amusing case of mistaken identity. In the second episode a verger is fired from his job because he can't read or write and sets up a successful chain of tea-shops.

Today has been fairly quiet at work, but I managed to get away quite sharply, so that was good. The weather also seems to be starting to brighten up a bit now.

Of course, today is Saint Patrick's Day, one of the guys working at my desk at work is Irish and he announced on Friday that he was going to be off work today. When he was asked why he replied: "It's St. Paddy's Day. It's my national duty to get drunk."