Neighbourhood Watch (behind the curtains)

It's been a quiet couple of weeks. Warm, lazy summer days - typically featuring a nice afternoon walk through the local woods and fields; blackberry picking along the way and, at the walk's completion, a cold pint of cider in the sunshine. Lovely.

What else? Well I've been slowly stepping through the Firefly (excellent) and Tru Calling (Eliza Dushku - hubba hubba!) DVD box sets and also a pretty dull SQL Server manual (yawn). As I said it's been quiet. Too quiet.

Tuesday was very interesting though. I was woken early at the crack of 9AM by a group of people chatting loudly outside of my window. What's going on? I thought. My flat is on the first floor, I drew my curtains aside and looked down to the driveway below. There was a guy with a professional looking handheld movie camera. He was shooting (several times) another guy arriving on a moped. Hmmm, probably a student film.

An hour later I could hear things being moved about in the flat directly below me. Lots of tape being unreeled and stuck down. What were the two young girls who owned the place up to? I looked down at their windows around the back, someone was covering the glass with black sheeting, either to prevent light from entering or perhaps to keep people from looking in? More filming was to take place, this time inside. But for what purpose? A low budget porn video maybe? In the flat below me? Surely not.

After lunch, the camera man was outside again, this time with another guy who was holding a large fluffy boom microphone. Suddenly a smart blue open-top sports car drove past, its occupants - three very attractive young ladies - calling 'cooeee' to an 'actor' who was walking below my window. After several takes they disappeared inside once more. Yeah, they must be filming something for a smut channel. Maybe I could be a stand-in? I mused.

As evening started to fall I could hear more talking from below, this time emanating from the kitchen. A man with a deep sexy French accent was talking in great detail about the use of spices in cooking. A woman was asking him questions and he was obviously demonstrating to her his technical prowess as a master chef.

So what had been going on all day? Was it a shoot for a short student film, a sexy suburban housewives video or a Celebrity Chef 'comes round and cooks you a meal' TV programme? It remains a mystery. I wasn't nosey enough to find out. All I could do was take the odd sneaky peek out from behind my curtains. So, please keep an eye out as you watch the tube for a show featuring a guy on a moped, girls in a blue sports car and a French chef. Let me know if you see it.