Sneak Preview

I know it's some months off, but when I bundle all the episodes of Up Close... together into a single file, this will be the front cover. I got a bit distracted into this when I should have been doing something else this morning. Well, it's done now, and I couldn't resist sharing...

Taking stock

I'm definitely in the final straight with the current story. And I'm really pleased with how the final 2 episodes are shaping up.

I was a bit thrown by the Elvis impersonator appearing in the election campaign, and not as a fringe candidate either. I had planned the election into the run of the story - I could have dropped the "Election Special" into February, March or April - but I hadn't expected the King... Anyhow, I've decided to embrace the "real" Elvis and shamelessly use his song in the next episode. It was so much better than my original choice.

The Organisation looks set to enjoy a kind of half life for at least the next 6 months, so I do have some grace until I am jettisoned from the State bureaucracy. So this should allow me to carry on in my intended direction of travel as the chill wind of austerity whistles through the Agency.

And then, I hope, I should have an angle on where we go next.

Black Tears

I suppose the Kid cried black tears back in the dumpster in Reaching the LEARNER. It seems The Organisation is going to be closed down, so I wonder how many will cry to see it go. Whatever. We won't be crying in public, though, to get sympathy.

Hearing about these things from the BBC rather than your bosses certainly makes them worse. Now I know why people punch journalists out. Surprised it doesn't happen more often.

I suppose the Organisation's epitaph is that it failed to show the agility it insisted that the whole education sector needed to thrive in the future. Poetic justice, I guess.

Up close and personalised episode 9

Things start to fall apart as the team encounter some popular resistance to the Goodfellow Implementation. You can find the comic in THE STORIES tab, under the heading, Up Close and Personalised. It is labelled as Chapter 8.

NB This shows as chapter 8 in the Smack Jeeves format cuz we put the election special elsewhere

Every now and again, cynics will say that our current system is "beyond satire". I must admit that I was a little despondent a couple of weeks ago when Gordon Brown had Elvis introduce one of his electioneering press conferences.

Darn. I thought of it first. And everybody knows that Elvis is on the side of the people.

I've always given the advice that if you're feeling unsure about what to do in a presentation, "show them a picture of Elvis, everybody loves Elvis..." It's both heartening and worrying to see somebody following my advice, and managing to trump it so spectacularly.

The Elvis in the story comes from this press report from a year or so back. Got me thinking about vigilantes with movie-star names.

Thinking ahead.

Three episodes to go in the current story, so I'm having to think about what happens next to our heroes. I'm aiming for a summer break and starting a new big story in September. This was my plan last year, but I just couldn't resist dropping a summer special in, so who knows...

Anyhow, in some ways timing is good. I should have time to work out just what a change of administration would mean for The Agency. Having the FED is good - everybody is calling every type of money-saving "efficiency" these days. So the FED will be there claiming credit for everything. Though they know full well where efficiency ends and economy begins.

I used to work for a bank - some time ago now - but there were some guys called the "Performance Improvement Unit". Their job was to find departments they could get rid of, costs they could cut. Needless to say, everybody was scared of them. Smart people, too. Unusual in a bank. These people were my inspration for Angelus and the organisation she's part of.

Talking of scary, I'm also aiming to get Zee back behind her desk. She's not best pleased to have had our chums covering her absence, but she hasn't worked out what she's going to do about it.

So, all I can predict so far is budgetary constraint, the FEDs, and Zee...