Craig Crane

Well, I know they are in demand at the moment, but I am a little surprised to hear that from the time you order them from Apple.com you can have as much as a three week wait!

Just got in from work

Woke at 5:30, so had a wee lie in. got into work for 8, left at 9pm.

Hit all my targets, met deadline and picked up tomorrows breakfast in M&S!

Totally forgot the train would be filled with tossers & piss heads.

Going to bed with Ipod and new Beyer Dynamic DT 770 headphones….

OK, so I promise to stop talking about the cat at some point in the near future, but it is still feeling very strange that she is not around at all.

Maybe its because we dont know where she is, and wont feel any resolve untill we get her ash’s… just as we did with Tammy.

We have decided to get a couple of new kittens in a months time. Not to replace FiFi, as that would be impossible…. she was the cats cat… but because we just like having them around. Whether tey will equal Fi is another matter…. its hard to say.

I have the picture that I published earlier in the week on my desktop at the mo, and every now nd a agin, I catch it in the corner of my eye as I work and cant beleive, I mean really cant beleive how sudden and quick this all came about. One minute we had a great cat, the next we didnt….

I suppose thats what happens when you dont have to deal with your own mortality or of those around you that often… it takes ou by surprise.

Chloe, my youngest is now really concerned about Charlotte crossing the road on the way to school… she doesnt want the same thing to happen.

Work:

Work is really hard at the moment. Obviously I cant go into any detail about the show, the client or anything else really…. all I can say is that come Sept, I am taking a week of and doing nothing!

No CG, no nothing! Nada, Niet, Rien, Zip….. nuffink!

Well, I may do some Facial animation…

But thats it

Oh, and a sky dive and some scuba and also look for my nearest wall climbing centre….

But otherthan that, bugger all.

This time yesterday, Fifi was outside, running about doing what she did (mainly chasing bugs and lying on the floor waiting for a tummy rub). Clearly, she saw something that made her run across the road, and we are now left here stunned at A; how this weekend has been marred and B; how we are amazed that she had such an impact on us.

My cat died today…

Today, like every other normal day, she would come to me, wanting to be let out. Sometime between me letting her out and Marie Claire coming back from work, she was hit by a car in our street. Somehow, with a Broken Pelvis and her rear paws hanging by a thread she made her way up our drive to the front door and meowed until we heard her.

She was a mess, but Im guessing that the lack of feeling to her from the waist down meant she was in no real pain…

In Life, she was spirited and very very playfull, and even up to the last moments at the vets she still had that devlish little glint in her eye, a zest for life that unfortunately was going to be short lived due to the damaged caused…

And yet, looking at her at the vets, its almost as if she knew… this was it.

To say I am saddened is an understatement. I chose her at the pet store. She sat in the palm of my hand, and I knew there and then that this was going to be the family pet, the one that would take over from where Tammy left off…. From day one she won our hearts over a million times… and her party trick of just flopping on the floor, demanding attention and a tummy rub will be missed…

Chloe saw her when she came into the house… something I regret happening, but Charlotte (who unofficially took ownership of FiFi) was not here. She was and still is at a sleep over and must be told in the morning. Knowing how it went last time we told her we lost a cat, I am not looking forward to tomorrow at all….

She was a great cat, and I hate myself for having to make the call on her fate based on so many contrasting factors. Although she looked ok from the waist up, I knew that the work involved to fix her, and the drastic change to her life would have been too much to bear… and so I made the call to have her put down…

She went so calmly, and I try to take some form of solace knowing that she felt no pain, but equally I am struggling with the fact that had I not let her out then she may still be here.

There is now an eerie silence in the house, where her collar bell would have broken the quiet. All that can be heard now are the saddened and curious wondering’s of a six year old, struggling to come to terms with this evenings events…

All I have left now are her collar and a few pictures… keeping her still long enough to take photo’s was a task in itself….

I’m very sad.

Being a father, there are some things in life you just cant avoid, and they can take the form of dealing with really shitty nappies, that reek like hell itself, burning the lining of your nose as you try not to inhale any of the noxious odors or take the kids to see Fantastic 4, rise of the silver surfer.

Give me the nappies any day.

The choices available to us were Pirates, Spiderman 3 and f4…. each of which was on the receiving end of a Mark Kermode rant and deservedly so… but we opted for F4 based on the running time…. It was the lesser of three evils.

WHAT A CROCK! Its not even a renter…. It was just so lame, I was actually looking forward to seeing Stan Lee make his obligatory “I created this” cameo…. and even that was so blatant, it left the film no place else to go than down one of the many holes bored by the surfer himself…..

The Mr fantastic rubber dance in the night club was just soooo dam painful to watch, and for once, I just sat there wishing my youngest would utter those imortal words that can ruin a trip the the cinema: “Daddy, I need the loo, I really do, I’m bursting!”. But alas, the little thing just sat there, drinking every last drop of her big gulp, teasing me in some cruel and twisted manner with every deliberate slurp and sip…. very unfitting for a father day

And the fact they had an ending that suggests there may be more of the four just kills me…. I used to love the F4 comics as a kid…. WHAT HAVE THEY DONE??????

Highlight of the trip was the Potter trailer….

This time last week, I was stood at the airfield, and very very unaware of what to expect with the Tandem Jump.

All this week, I have been getting these weird moments where I realize the absurdity of the jump itself, and get the same adrenalin rush for just a very short moment as I recall the sensation of jumping out of a plane. Its like butterflies in the pit of your belly, but accompanied with the widest shit eating grin you can imagine.

On the train ride to work, I actually found myself looking up at the clouds, smiling, with a “been there done that” notion in my mind, and the sudden desire to do it again.

I have even allowed such skydiving film crap as Terminal Velocity and Drop Zone into my DVD collection, for those rare moments of skydiving that the films marketing hinged onto back in the early 90’s when Xtreme sport was becoming de-rigeur. Of course, Kathryn Bigalows Point Break was always welcome in the collection and has seen three formats as a reult. VHS, LD DVD. Im certain a HD version will become the 4th.

So, with Azzard hard at work dropping two stone so he can jump on the 1st Sept, I have to ask will the reality of his first jump live up to the hype? After all, he has heard us all waxing lyrical about it now for 7 full days and each time is no lesser than the last. I think he has nothing to worry about….. come Sept 2, he will wake with the exact same shit eating grin I have been all week.

But what about me? I really want to do the AFF in AZ, USA…. but do I have the balls to solo freefall? After all, last week I jumped (my first) with a man who was on his 4000th… but if I pursue this mad quest to fly (and not bounce) how will I feel on the edge of the plane where for the first time that choice to leap is actually in my hands? Does the ages old survival instinct come into play as your mind trys to battle your heart and talk you out of this madness? Or does the urge to fly take over and you adopt a life wish (as oppossed to a death wish) and away you go!!!!!!!

I remember my first Open Water dive here in the UK being the same. As we arrived at the dive site, and I was asked to fasten the rope to the Buoy from the RIB, my heart was racing, and my dive buddy was busy being sea sick……. below us was a world I had paid over a thousand pounds in tuition and dive gear in order to be able to explore, and I am certain that for a moment, I was a little hesitant.

Obviously, it was a great dive and I was hooked! But that first one was a real buzz, brimming with adrenalin, hesitation and commitment to the fact hat yes… I was going in.

So, I’m in the plane, my first solo jump…. and I have my two instructors falling either side of me in order to practice chord pulling and to steady me as I get an idea as to how best to fall (I guess there is a good way and a really bad way!)…. I am pretty confident that as well as being really buzzed and excited by all this, there will also be at least a nano second of doubt, shitting myself and fear. But isn’t that what life is about though? I ’spose playing it safe is an option, but then, have you really lived if you have not done a few dangerous things?

I don’t really know the absolute answer to that question, but I have to say, all this week I have felt slightly different. I feel like I have really pushed myself and wouldn’t mind a few more pushes like that. I came away with a real serene sense of achievement, both physically and spiritually as well. As a pessimistic optimist I do sometimes look at things from a worse case scenario p.o.v. Yet all this week I have different perception now. For the first time, I put my life in someones hands during an insane few minutes as I plummeted to earth and as expected, it all turned out well…. As we fell, the pessimism faded and the optimist in me soared! I think that this is the root cause for all those mini waves of excitement I have been getting all week . And now, as I ready myself to sit at the edge of the plane for a 2nd, 3rd and 4th time, I know what to expect and can really just enjoy the ride for the ride, as opposed to the first time, where you not only enjoy the ride, but have to deal with the sudden assault on all your senses in a way you have never experienced before. THATS all part of the insane rush of your first jump, and I hazzard a guess that the reason the four solo jumpers before me looked so chilled is because they were just ready for the ride. That insane rush goes, and is replaced with something else… something way cooler!

And thats what I want to discover next!

Tandem skydiving: The most dangerous yet life affirming thing I have done!

We went up to the North London Airfield in Cambridge on the previous evening straight from work. I had been getting Rib Gens ready all day and was ready for some serious R&R…..

Well, because the group arrived later than everyone else, we were actually the last to jump, but when our time came, we all met the task at hand accordingly.

Yes, I was nervous. After all, this inst Scuba… if something goes wrong, it will do so in spectacular fashion,, and as the plane circles at 12000 feet (2.5 miles) ready to drop us off, I did wonder if this was conducive to a long and fruitful life.

Then again, I also came to the sudden realization that if I had to go, I would rather it be in a moment of madness as opposed a slow and tiresome death like dementia or the like. However, that combined realization probably took a nano second to go through my head, as my mind was racing. Billions of thoughts and probable outcomes were racing through my mind…

Did I turn the Gas of and chuck the cat out?????

Now, some thirty years later, I finally realized how my old parachute action Man must have felt on all those occasions he was tossed into the air, until getting caught on the overhead telephone wires. Was I going to end up like John Mills in the LONGEST DAY, suspended from a tree whilst all the real action takes place beneath me?

Every aspect of the trip up to 12K was screaming at me that I was about to do something extraordinary. The noise of the plane was overpowering, as was the smell from the Props… Jordy, my instructor had to really scream to be heard. This was just such a contrast from the quiet calm of my workstation at DNEG… and yet here we were, four of our group all about to doo something that was always “a few weeks away”. But it was NOW…

12000 feet.

We have arrived.

The side door is opened.

First out the door are the solo jumpers.

The guy that films for the DVD’s.

The girl that shoots the stills

Some other guy.

One minute they are there, the next they are off…

I make a point to look for them once we are out.

Whoa, its my turn….

My heart was thumping as we moved to the door of the plane.

The instructor reminded me to arch back and next thing I know, the buzz of the propellers was suddenly gone and all I could hear was the rush of me hitting 120mph as I fall to earth like Regulus, the Fallen Angel. Noise! So much noise and the Earth looks like a patchwork quilt….

I have totally forgotten to look for the previous jumpers because every sense is being assaulted by noise, cold, wind, fear, excitement, a sense of I AM REALLY FUCKING DOING THIS!!!!!!!

We free fall for 50 secs and then the chute is deployed….. quiet! The noise is gone and now I am hanging in the air, and the only thing stopping me falling further are the four clips that attach my harness to the instructors….

Now, that is TRUST!

Alas, I didn’t pay to have the Stills / DVD package, so all the shots are landlocked, but come Sept, I am going for the full Monty