Climate change

Making a film shouldn't be all fun & easy

Location Four beds in a line in Monastery of St Bernard | Mood Happy, happy, happy | Date 28 February 2006
Got a bit of a running joke going with myself (sad, I know), to do something foolish every year on the 28 February. I set a very high standard last year, with an act of folly that couldn't possibly be printed. And this year seems to have come together at the last minute too.

20,000 pounds in the kitty

Location Head in toilet at home | Mood Self-pitying | Date 25 January 2006
Human pyramid with the Guy Family, Fernand & Fernand's wife (Nicole) Photograph: Charlotte Rushton

A mini celebrity in the greasy spoon

Location Greasy spoon cafe in Old St | Mood Black humour | Date 11 January 2006
Osteopath Simon - together with painkillers Nurofen - worked a small miracle on my back, to the extent that I can now do everything except play the piano. Apparently I had twisted a rib which was poking into a lung and causing me to squeal every time I breathed in. The camera equipment and French Alps have owned up.

A dodgy bloke in the crowd

Location Hot bath | Mood Adrenalin comedown | Date 4 December 2005
Filming the climate change march with our new baby steadicam

Putting film before friend

Location Royal Free Hospital waiting room | Mood Guilty | Date 3 November 2005
Everything's gone pear-shaped. The surgeon sprang a last-minute major decision on Best Pal just before she had to go in for the operation. Exactly the reason she'd wanted me to always be there - to help disentangle the jargon. But I wasn't, and now she thinks she made the wrong decision and isn't blaming me as such, but did say, "I've never needed anyone as much as I needed you then, and you weren't there". So now I'm feeling guilt-stricken that I put my film before my friend.

Cattle class to Heathrow

Location Cattle class to Heathrow | Mood Worried | Date 31 October 2005
I've been helping my Best Pal wade through a million and one medical decisions to do with major surgery she has to have next year. She gets bamboozled by the doctors, so I've been going along to her appointments and taking notes. Which is fine, except two days ago they called her and said they have a cancellation and her operation is... today.

Doing the bad things

Location Any seat I like | Mood Excited | Date 19 October 2005
One of the best things about making documentaries is that you get to do all the bad things in the name of helping the rest of our species realise that they should stop doing the bad things. In this case, I'm flying from Singapore to Mumbai on the spare seat in the cockpit of a jumbo. Except I now know it's the jump seat on the flight deck of a 320. That's not such a good thing about getting immersed in so many new worlds - coming out with the lingo.

Can't ignore Nigeria

Location Healthy Eating Cafe in Camden | Mood Preparing for long battle ahead | Date 11 October 2005
Two good thoughts from "The End of Oil" conference today. 1. The problem is: how do we market austerity?

Someone to represent the future

Location Kitchen table in Spanner office. Too many people upstairs, can't think. | Mood Re-inspired | Date 3 October 2005
The Guy family. Photograph: Charlotte Rushton  

The world is doomed. And the film's no good.

Location Sofa in my house | Mood Very black | Date 28 September 2005
Finished reading "The Party's Over" in France and, as the full implications sink in, down goes my sunny disposition with it. Which reminds me of something a climate change specialist I met in Tuvalu (Pacific island being abandoned cos of rising sea levels) a couple of years ago said: that anyone who works on climate change gets deeply depressed and gets out after a couple of years.