Star gazing

Dave has just started his lifetime's ambition - a part time, distance learning astronomy degree. As you might expect, part of the course work involves observing stars and other objects in the sky, taking measurements of movement, identifying colour and brightness etc etc. Birmingham is hopeless for that sort of thing - it doesn't get dark there so much as orange, thanks to all the street lights - but rural Cumbria is much better, and over the weekend it was clear enough and cold enough to pop out a couple of evenings to gaze at the heavens.

On Saturday we took the car out to a layby part way up a hill to one side of Lake Windermere, where there's a good uninterrupted view of the northern and western half of the sky. When we set off it was clear (and very cold). By the time we'd arrived, only about 20 minutes later, some stubborn high cloud had drifted across and refused to budge. We saw odd frustrating glimpses of the Plough and one or two other bright stars, but nothing else, and we were beginning to turn blue.

On Sunday we didn't even bother with the car, just walked up the road at the back of the house, which eventually comes out onto country lanes in the hills behind the town. Again there was a good view north and west; again it was bitterly cold and this time the sky was clear. It's amazing what you can see when there isn't a constant haze of artificial light; stars were popping out in the most unexpected places. The very bright moon took away some of the clarity but Dave still saw more than enough for his studies. And this time we'd dressed appropriately in umpteen layers and boots and thick woolly scarves, so we didn't even feel the cold.

I have a feeling we'll be doing lots more star gazing in the months to come, as the seaons gradually change and new stars become visible. Thank heavens we spend so much time in an area where we can actually see them...

Currently reading

The last couple of weeks I've been reading 'The Evil Seed' by Joanne Harris (of 'Chocolat' fame). Recently I read her 'Blackberry Wine' and loved it, and was hunting around in our local W H Smith for another of her books to try. I saw 'Chocolat' and very nearly bought that, but then this title leapt off the shelf at me. The cover looked suitably creepy and the blurb sounded really intriguing, full of the suggestion of ghosts and general other-worldliness. I put 'Chocolat' down and bought this instead.

The first thing I found on opening the book was an author's note. Books quite often have explanatory notes from the writer, of course, but they tend to be at the end, once a reader knows what happened and wants some further information. This was at the start, and seemed basically to be trying to disassociate Ms Harris from the book. It was the first one she'd ever written, some twenty years ago. It had been out of print for some time, and only republished at the request of her readers. It had been through some further edits but was mostly still untouched.

It all sounded a little... strange. And when I started reading I soon saw why, because the style was surprisingly different from the seamless, beautiful prose of 'Blackberry Wine'. It was disjointed, with odd unannounced changes in point of view and chapters written in either first or third person depending on which character they represented. On top of that, characters seemed to do the oddest things, like chasing baddies half way across a county in the middle of the night without so much as a torch, and the only explanation was that this was all a bit spooky and supernatural.

The pages turned fast enough because I wanted to know what happened, but I can't really say I enjoyed the experience. The plot became steadily more and more melodramatic and the characters were just plain irritating. By the time I finished I was reading with gritted teeth, and the ending was so dark as to render the whole book rather pointless. Although there were flashes of Ms Harris's later brilliance, I won't be reading this again, whereas 'Blackberry Wine' has gone on my shelf of treasures to be savoured at a later date.

It raises interesting questions about whether writers should give in to their readers' demands. Yes, it sells more books; but if a reader only read this they might go away with a very unbalanced view of the author's capabilities. I'm not sure I'd want some of my earliest writing efforts to ever see the light of day!

Just finished...

I've been scribbling away the last couple of days on a new short story, inspired by recent news events here in the West Midlands. There's been a sudden rash of schools targeted by arsonists - more even than usual - and I was vaguely scratching my head and wondering why. Then a little imp in my head piped up with a wonderful theory and I just had to turn it into a story. I'm not going to give the whole thing away but I will just say 'never trust the headmaster'.

I don't often write stories based on news events; too often they've been and gone before I've managed to think my way through an associated plot. For crime stories, though, a trawl through the newspapers can be invaluable. There are so many people doing so many strange and dark things that it's a positive well (sink-hole?) of inspiration.

Forbidden fruit?

The spam is getting worse, but what an image this particular subject line conjures up:

"Every man should have a huge banana between his legs."

It must be something about the way my mind works, because I've immediately started to think of all sorts of naughty little stories. Bad Fiona. You'll have to blame the spammers.

In the wars...

On Saturday night we went out with friends for a smashing meal at a Thai restaurant in Knowle. The food was delicious and the restaurant very stylish (I set my heart on a beautiful Thai silk scarf that dangled enticingly above our table, but I was good and left it behind.) The only problem was the chairs. I sat down and realised I was a long way from the table, so grabbed my chair to pull it closer. What I didn't realise was that it was solid carved wood, weighed about half as much as a Thai elephant, and wasn't going anywhere. My hand slipped straight off again and I bent back two fingernails so badly that I ate the meal with one hand.

Then this morning our bathroom window jammed shut. It's probably the damp weather we've been getting, coupled with unseasonable warmth, that has made the wood swell. I heaved and shoved and pushed and joggled. Eventually the thing flew open - and promptly banged shut again, straight onto the knuckle of the same hand. It's made a lovely bruise, and typing hurts. Ow.

On a brighter note, I've been getting a sudden rash of spam emails promising me 'Miracle ErectionPills [sic] for you'. All I can say is, if they can give me an erection it'll be a miracle indeed.

Now it's the monitor

Having fritzed my laptop the other week and had to rush out and replace it, I've now spotted that my trusty old monitor is on the blink. It's hardly surprising. I bought it in about 2000, as one of the very first flat screen monitors which at the time was very ground-breaking. Since then technology (as ever) has moved on, leaving my monitor trailing along behind, and it had also faded or 'muzzied' over the years so I was having to sit closer and closer to pick out any detail. Of course, that wasn't doing either my back or my eyes much good, so today I decided enough was enough.

"Let's go to the big branch of Curry's in the Bull Ring," Dave said. "They'll have plenty of choice there."

They might well have, if they still existed. Good grief. We've only been away from Brum for 3 weeks and suddenly everything has changed. That store has vanished without trace, without even a note on the window to tell us where our nearest alternative is, and is in the process of being replaced by yet another teen clothing shop. There are now 953 teen clothing outlets in Birmingham city centre. And nowhere to buy computers.

We drove out to a suburb where we knew there was a Currys and by some miracle that had survived. And I've bought myself a very nice 18.5 inch crystal flat screen that makes reading text a breeze and looking at pictures a pleasure.

But I'm left wondering what's going to break down or give out next...

Comedy 'riches'

Last night we headed for the Glee Club in Birmingham city centre with a couple of friends, to see the American comedian Rich Hall. In case you haven't heard of him, he turns up quite regularly on tv shows such as QI and Have I Got News For You, and also did a recent series of documentaries about different film genres in the US. Although he hails from Montana he's settled in Britain and has a remarkably British sense of humour. He's caustic, he's sarcastic, sometimes he's downright vitriolic - but he's always very, very funny.

He seems to write all his own stuff and also improvised large chunks of the show, picking on hapless members of the audience and weaving jokes around their relationships and job titles. He had immense fun with one energy manager, for instance, and with a headline he'd recently seen in an Irish newspaper: 'Cork Man Drowns' ("His name was Bob."). He also began with a terrific piece about the Conservative Party Conference, currently taking over a large section of Birmingham city centre around the ICC with the result that parking is almost impossible. "When I say I'm pleased to be here," he deadpanned, "I meant I had to walk all the way from the far side of Edgbaston."

We spent the evening helpless with laughter... which was just as well since the seating arrangements were far from ideal. Around 400 people crammed into a small hall, with tables, is not conducive to space - I've seen sardine tins that were roomier. It was hot, it was squashed, and the poor folk who ordered meals spent the next half hour trying to eat them without elbowing both their neighbours in the ribs (or worse). Rich Hall is clearly a very popular act and you can understand the Glee Club management wanting to cram in as many folk as possible, but this time they went a little too far.

Great night out, though - and we even got a ride back in our friends' swanky new car!

Another chance to see...

Just in case you missed seeing my tiny story 'That Sinking Feeling' on Sunday 19th September, there's another chance now that Paragraph Planet have uploaded their September archive.

Click on the archive link and select Sept 19th from the drop-down box in the middle of the screen. Like my previous Planet entry, 'Rollercoaster Ride', this is based on an episode from my childhood and yes, the neighbours really were that annoyed!

While you're at it, have a look at the entry from Sept 12th which was written by friend and fellow-writer Sharon Maria Bidwell, which is stuffed full of vivid imagery in only 75 words.

You'll be able to catch both stories until the end of November.

Minor disaster

Dave and I were travelling back to Birmingham on Sunday. We always take our last bag of trash to the local tip (rather than leave it somewhere to niff, or bring it all the way back). That morning it was hammering down with rain and there was a big queue for the recycling bins. In the rush the wrong bag got thrown out - the one containing all my work files.

I lost quite a bit. Two whole ring-binders full of work - one a novel in progress, the other a collection of short stories I'm hoping to submit somewhere. On top of that I'd jammed in all my birthday cards, and at least one birthday present. But a cd is replaceable; work isn't. Luckily I had most of the contents saved on a flash drive, but I've still lost all my handwritten notes - and the list of exactly which stories were included in the anthology.

I've spent today printing out two copies of everything so I can keep a copy in each property and not have to ferry files about. I've also slowly rebuilt the anthology, using an out of date copy of the contents list and a good deal of detective work. It might not be 100% back to how it was, but it's getting close.

I still go cold when I think of that bag getting thrown away... but I'm very very grateful that at the last minute I decided to pack my flash drive in my suitcase, not that bag. That really would have been a disaster...

Another paragraph accepted

Paragraph Planet have accepted my latest submission, a 75-word tale about a bicycle ride with an unexpected (and muddy!) outcome. This is another story which really, genuinely happened when I was about ten or eleven and might make you smile.

You can read the story free for one day only (at least until it appears on the archive page) tomorrow, Sunday 19th September, by following the link above.

New gay horror anthology

I keep forgetting to mention that QueeredFiction have a new collection of stories out, this time with a horror theme. The book is called Blood Fruit, contains stories by eleven new and established authors, and as with all their titles is available in both electronic and print formats.

I don't have a story in this one (couldn't get anything finished in time to submit) but if the standard of writing is anything like as high as their recent sf anthology Queer Dimensions, then it's well worth splashing out on a copy. Just follow the link above to QF's website and you'll see the book in the scroll-box in the centre of the page.

Apostrophe-itis?

Do you forget when to stick the little blighters in and when not to? Then look no further than this snappy little number on YouTube, which is to-the-point and just repetitive enough to help you remember the rules.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vc2aSz9Ficw&feature=player_embedded

Some of the images on the accompanying video are worrying, though. Especially the ones from printed newspapers. I won't go off into 'what's the world coming to' type grumbles but it does make you wonder how much use an education system is if so many people get it so wrong so much of the time...

Oooh, shiny

A few weeks back I noticed that my trusty old laptop was getting distinctly slow. I've had it for the best part of six years and it's been everywhere with me on my travels, helping me to write and stay in touch. But it didn't have a huge store of memory and the little it did have was obviously clogged.

Dave kindly offered to do a rebuild of the hard disk, to clear out any accumulated rubbish and start from scratch. The other weekend we had some spare time, so I copied any vital files and then handed it over for surgery. "I'm trashing the hard disk... NOW," Dave announced.

Thirty seconds later he added, "Um, you do have the registration number for the XP install disk, don't you?"

You can guess what happened next...

Between us we'd rendered the laptop useless. It wouldn't load XP without that wretched registration number, and it's too old to take anything more up to date. I can use Linux but my favourite word processor, WordPerfect, won't run under Linux and nor will one or two other well-loved programs. So, there was nothing else for it. We bundled into the car, drove to a huge local Tesco which has an excellent technology department, and I proceeded to buy myself a brand new laptop.

This cost less than half the original one, with about six times as much memory, a larger keyboard, an HD-standard screen, and Windows 7 preloaded. It's easier to type on, faster, sleeker, has vastly more storage and a better selection of games for when I'm bored. I wouldn't recommend trashing an old laptop to get hold of a new one, but in this case I think I've done rather well...

Roar

Yesterday for a laugh we went to the Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery to catch their T-Rex exhibition, something we've been meaning to do for weeks. We only just made it, because today is the very last day. They weren't quite stacking chairs and sweeping the floor, but it was a close run thing.

And heaps of fun. It cost £5 each to get in (most of the exhibitions are free) but there was a lot to see including several life-size animatronic models of dinosaurs - three T-Rex, an Ankylosaurus and a very dead Triceratops. Unlike most dinosaur exhibitions, which simply concentrate on the history, this one was asking a very specific question: was T-Rex a predator or a scavenger? There were a whole series of displays pointing out the differences between the two forms, both in dinosaur times and in the modern animal kingdom. Differences that included predators being fast and agile, and having strong front legs/claws to hold onto prey - none of which apply to the lumbering T-Rex with its silly little front limbs.

By the end of the exhibition we'd come to the conclusion these huge beasts were probably scavengers, and even posted our vote in the voting booth at the end. But talking about it over lunch we realised that the whole exhibition had been subtly leading us to that conclusion ('Are you sure T-rex was a predator? Are you still sure?') and that reality might well have been fuzzier. No matter, it was a fun morning out.

We also popped our heads into a different gallery to see part of the famous Anglo-Saxon Staffordshire Hoard, discovered a couple of years ago, which apparently puts even the Sutton Hoo treasure into the shade. I have yet to be convinced about that (having seen some of the Sutton Hoo artefacts in the British Museum - they are utterly stunning), but the Staffs Hoard is certainly vast, and fascinating. Almost all the pieces are military, with none of the drinking vessels and jewellery you'd expect from, say, a massive royal grave, and yet they're exquisitely made with microscopic gold filigree and finely cut garnet inlay. Which begs the obvious question - what on earth was this hoard, and why were the individual pieces scrunched up before it was buried? I expect the arguments will rage for years.

Reading positions

The Guardian's book blog had an amusing article yesterday on the positions people choose to read, especially if they're reading in bed.

The blog's author seemed to think that lying on one's side is the most common position for reading in bed, and it's certainly the one I find most comfortable. If I lie on my back my arms get tired holding the book aloft; if I roll onto my stomach I end up with neck-ache and sore elbows. Oddly, though, I always lie on my right side, never my left. This makes no sense because I'm right-handed, so lying on my left side would free up my right hand/arm for turning the pages. But I don't, and don't think I ever could.

At least I'm not like one writer friend who doesn't read in bed at all, but in the bath. I'd love to know how she stops the pages getting soggy!

How do you read in bed? Book or e-reader? Sitting or lying? And do you ever fall asleep with the book in your hand?

Currently working on...

It seems like an age since I reported on what I'm currently writing - so much so you might think I've been sitting with my feet up, filing my nails and doing no work at all.

That isn't the case; I've just been concentrating on a couple of long-term projects which are going to take a while to finish. One is a whole collection of short, dark, crime-related stories which I'm hoping to submit somewhere as an anthology once I have enough gathered together. So far I'm up to about eight or nine, including one inspired by a recent story in the news, but obviously I need more than that before any publisher will look at it. And the second project is a brand-new novel, which I've been thinking about for some time but have only just begun committing to paper. Like much of my work it's a darkly humorous take on 21st century relationships (this one involving a landscape gardener and his wife). Given my current record on finishing novels, it's likely to be a couple of years yet before it's in a fit state to even think about sending off anywhere.

But rest assured I am still writing and I'll try to report back on progress from time to time.

Many a true word...

I've been decorating this week, in the little cubby-hole I use as a study. The previous owners of the house had it as a nursery for their young son, and had decorated it beautifully with baby-themed wallpaper which is very sweet but perhaps not entirely appropriate for an office. So I dug out an old pot of paint and got to work.

The wallpaper is mostly cream, with cute baby words on it like 'sleepy', 'hungry' and 'naughty'. I was busy obliterating one of these when the paint brush slipped out of my hand, did a few graceful pirouettes in mid-air, and landed with a pale blue painty splat on the pristine cream-coloured carpet.

So which word was I painting over at the time?

Clumsy.

:D

Paragraph lost, paragraph regained

A while back now I had a little piece accepted by Paragraph Planet, an online magazine that publishes paragraphs that are exactly 75 words long.

Owing to a slight misunderstanding I missed the publication date, which was actually back in June. However, the good news is that you can still read my offering by following this link, and selecting the entry for 7th June.

The piece is called 'Rollercoaster Ride' and is a (somewhat autobiographical) tale of a child's visit to a fairground. And all in only 75 words. Phew. I'm not going to tell you which bits really happened, though. You'll have to work that out for yourselves!

Quick march...

It was a gorgeous day on Saturday - sunny intervals, occasional stormy-looking clouds, warm but with a fresh breeze. We haven't done nearly enough walking in the Lakes lately - Real Life (TM) keeps getting in the way - but this time we were determined to make the most of the opportunity and chose the Grizedale Forest, a huge area of forest trails with the added interest of sudden mountain views and a fascinating sculpture trail.

Over the years we've done several of the trails but this time Dave picked one we hadn't done before, taking in Grizedale Tarn which is apparently the only natural tarn in the whole forest. The way to it was surprisingly rough with steep slopes and ankle-breaker tracks but we followed the white marker posts past some ingenious sculptures (a giant metal wasp, something that looked like huge animal droppings but was probably meant to be seeds) and were rewarded when we staggered out at the top onto rough heathland with a stunning view of the Fairfield horseshoe in the distance.

Although we followed the trail for what we thought was every inch, we somehow managed to miss the tarn completely (or perhaps it's a special tarn that vanishes and springs out at you when you least expect it) but it was still a lovely three-and-a-half mile walk. But towards the end Dave realised the two hours' parking he'd paid for was rapidly running out, and we'd have to hurry. I got back down the rough tracks and steep slopes in record time and we worked out we'd done the entire walk in one hour and forty minutes.

It was only when we were back in the car that Dave revealed the recommended time for the walk was... two and a half hours.

No wonder my legs were shaking!

Drying out

We are slowly but surely drying ourselves out. We've had visits from a local builder, our insurance assessor, and a decorator. We've stripped the vinyl wallpaper off the worst affected part of the hall, since it was acting like a massive waterproof jacket and keeping the water in. We now have two industrial sized dehumidifiers and two colossal air-blowers going, full-tilt, in the hall and pantry. I can hardly hear myself think, but gradually the damp patch is shrinking. And at last, our next door neighbours have also set up dryers in their house so the damp will hopefully stop oozing through the wall. It's all progress.

Mind you, talk about 'after the flood'. The night before last we had an earthquake. O.o

Only a tiddler at 1.7 magnitude, but it was a big enough bang to wake me up and shake the foundations of the house. Whatever next? A plague of locusts? A volcano in the back yard?