So let me get this straight...

"If I *change* my hotel booking, it will cost me £14.99 to add two extra nights to the start of the booking?"
"Yes."
"What about I just book 2 extra nights for the 10th and 11th?"
"Ummm... that will be [number first quoted less £14.99]"
"I book 2 extra nights then, thanks."

*slams head onto desk in frustration*

This is in stark stark contrast to my favourite airline who I had just spoken to thus:

"I need to move my departure date forward by 2 days but I have a non-change, non-refund ticket, is there anything we can do?"
"Let me see sir," clickity, click. "I've changed your ticket to the next type at a cost of £96 and changed the travel dates. Is that alright?"
"Perfect."
"Shall I add it to your previous bill too sir so that you don't have to do anything else?"
"Umm... yes please."
"You're welcome sir, is there anything else we can do?"

"YES, BRING BACK FECKING CONCORDE!!!!"

Ok, well, I didn't say the last part, besides Concorde doesn't fly to the Heart of Darkness.

Feeling a lot better today.

TV to slit your wrists by...

I watched a mini-series of On the Beach last night. Recent production by Australian TV with Armand Asante as the sub commander and Bryan Brown as the scientist.

They tried to bring it up to date, which was something of a problem. The war was triggered after a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. While this would be a certain trigger and there could be a nuclear exchange, I doubt if it would end up quite the same as a Soviet invasion of Germany in the old scenarios. After that the scenario was the same as Shute's book, a lone US sub arrives in the Southern Hemisphere to find radiation levels are lower and that only Australia is left. But the radiation from the Northern Hemisphere is working its way south and soon all will be killed.

They stick pretty faithful to Shute's book, the signal from the Northern Hemisphere is handled in a different way, and it is, like the book and the B&W film as depressing as hell. Worth a look, but try to ignore the fact that there was only a limited budget for American actors and that Bryan Brown isn't necessarily the best actor in the world. Rachel Ward, yet again, fails to keep her clothes on.

The difficulty is they used the Shute Scenario. This is set in the early 21st century, not the 60's. Firstly there's a lot more preparation around for disaster recovery, and we have a fair bit more knowledge about the true effects than Shute did. While the radiation would be bad, I'm not convinced you'd see global levels of over 150 rads covering the entire planet for over a year. There's no sign of increased cloud cover or other serious climatic effects which, frankly, would be the real problem. There's also the idea that Australia would not be a target itself. There are several key US military tracking points which certainly would be high on anybodies list of targets.

Likewise, there seemed to be none of the deep C&C bunkers we know the US and other militaries have. A direct hit is not necessarily a problem for Cheyanne Mountain, the Australian government have months to prepare deep bunkers, a last stand in Antartica, move people even further south to Hobart and so forth. Additionally, there's a hell of a lot of sea going hardware out there and while the Chineese have a serious land army and missile capability, the surface and submarine fleets are limited.

In some respects it would have worked better to make it a historical piece rather than try to update it and leave the questions floating.

More interesting now, I think, is how would the southern hemisphere cope with a completely obliterated northern hemisphere and the climatic effects of a long hard few winters and hundreds of millions of refugees rolling south by any means possible. Still, it was a window to the world I grew up in and quite a sobering one at that.