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2008 has not been a great year......for a variety of reasons (mainly financial). On the other hand, I've had worse ones in other ways, so overall I'd put it in the category of "Years to Forget".
Ka troubleDuring this time, on a mid-day visit to the hairdresser, I was sitting
waiting upstairs at the back of shop (on the main A6 just a few minutes from our
house) when there was loud noise outside and hairdresser rushed to look out of
the window. She could see the aftermath of what appeared to be a collision
between a black BMW and a parked car. "I hope no-one here's got a Ford Ka", she
said. "I have", I said. "But are you parked on the other side of the road,
further up near the bus stop?". "Not usually", I said, "but I am today". Oh
dear. I went outside to find my Ka had been a little squashed between the kerb
(bending a rear wheel rim) and the corner of a BMW which had pushed in both the
drivers door and the bodywork behind it, such that we couldn't get the door open
at all.
However, my next worry was that the insurers (his, not mine) might choose to write the Ka off, rather than repair it, since it's getting on for 10 years old and therefore not worth much - on paper. To me it's worth more, since it was my mum's car previously and she only did ~4000 miles before I took it over, and I've done less than 10,000 more miles since then! Much to my relief, they did decide to repair it, and a pretty good job they made of it too. But then, a month later, my Scenic was parked outside the office in its proper parking space and suffered a "hit and run". I came out after work, tried to open the drivers door and it seemed to be stuck. On closer examination, I discovered the front corner had been pushed in slightly, bending the front bumper, buckling the wing and forcing it into the front edge of the driver's door. This time there was no-one else to make a claim against, and rather than pay the excess and risk my protected no-claims bonus it was cheaper to find and independent repairer and pay for it myself. So I was £150 out of pocket for getting my door to open, and once again it was not my fault!
Video SessionsAs I've mentioned in previous years, I am trying to do more video work, with varying degrees of success and very little consistency. I've expanded the pages in my production website www.dv2broadcast.co.uk although it's yet to generate any significant business. This year I've done less such work on a paid basis than in other recent years, but I've done a few things other things that I'm quite pleased with even though there was no money in them. The most recent was a day spent with actor George Telfer, who we'd met in August (see Kathie's page), producing some promotional excerpts from one-man plays that he's appeared in and in some cases written. These were shot at the office in a relatively small space, which you can see (below left) in the test video I shot a few weeks earlier. The only difference was that I hung a backdrop cloth for George's shoot because that's how it had looked when we saw him performing live. I don't actually have a black cloth background. The one I used is blue and rather creased but by keeping the lights on him, and off the background, it comes out looking fairly black (on most monitors). It was a good opportunity to try out a bit of drama-style lighting which can go into my showreel as well as his.
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parking where they shouldn't,
"F-ing this" and "F-ing that" in loud voices outside my door, sink full of dirty
washing 
in the shared kitchen, filling the bin and not emptying it, and toilet
rolls - I had to keep my own because they would go so fast and no-one would
replace them until at least the following morning. Things settled down a bit
after a few months and a change of manager, but the staff turnover was so high
that there was a constant stream of people who didn't know or didn't care what
the rules were, so it never really got sorted out. 
A third car was involved, and thankfully no-one was hurt as it was this
car which had initially collided with the BMW which in turn veered across the
road and into mine. It was something of a first to be giving the police my
details and getting an incident number safe in the knowledge that in no way was
any of this my fault! 
and
after work...