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[Andrew999]

Do you ever feel like a character in a comic book?

Yesterday, I spent several hours of a rapidly diminishing life putting together a flatpack bookcase with a big label saying 'estimated assembly time: 30 mins' only to find at the end that I had assembled one of the panels the wrong way around (why can't they put that cheap finishing strip on both sides, it would only be pennies!) - the only solution was to take it all apart and begin again.

That followed the previous day's punchline when I got out of the car in fresh clothes at the same moment as a passing seagull decided to offload. Nevertheless, I was determined to complete my shopping in Lidl (currently the highlight of my week in these lockdown times) and at least the stink ensured everyone kept their social distance with the two-metre rule.

The reason I say all this is that the Korean dram Extraodinary You has just won the Drama of the Year Award for Korean TV. The story is about a high school girl, Danni, who discovers she is a character in a comic book. I love meta-fiction like that! One of the sub-plots is that only the main characters have names - those in the background only have numbers. Danni falls in love with one of these nameless characters - number thirteen - and the rest you'll have to see.

Korea seems bursting with creative young talent these days with neo-noir movies winning oscars, K-Pop topping the charts in half the world, the growth of manhwa and webtoons - how do they do it?

Meanwhile, back to.. am I living in a comic book? It certainly feels like it - with the lockdown acting as a plot driver. Is Imperial College the centre of an evil organisation bent on taking over the world with an evil mastermind at the helm? Has the Prime Minister been replaced by Bojo, the crazy clown? Will a superhero come to our rescue? Will there ever be pop-up pubs? What do you think? How will the plot unfold?

[The Australian Panther]

It can feel like that sometimes. Everytime I got/get anywhere near my exWife I say or do the most inappropriate thing, or am in the wrong place, at the wrong time, talking to the most inappropriate person, like fate is setting me up. But its balanced by other days, which seem less frequent, in which unexpected good things happen all day. Fortunately, I had one of them this week.
No, I'm not in a comic book. Any editor would have rejected the script! Wouldn't sell.