an earthbound misfit

moving house

2011-02-26T01:29:00.000Z

dear reader,

i have upped sticks and moved over to WordPress.

if you wish to read my random ramblings in future, i'm sure your GP can prescribe something...

if, however, that fails to work, you're very welcome over at dazedeye.

hope to see you there soon.

*hugs*

Squeaky

XXX

R.I.P. Alan

2011-02-21T22:08:00.000Z

Alan the chicken is no more. we will miss her sweet, trilling voice (not all chickens squawk), and her gentle, friendly and curious manner. i am dreadfully sorry i could not find the courage to break her neck last night, because it meant she suffered more.

amazingly, she was still with us--just--this morning. which was the most distressing thing. i sobbed all the way to work, because i knew there was a lovely, sweet-natured girl lying slowly dying in our front room, and i couldn't be there to do what little i could to ease her passing.

to all those who offered sympathy and love and hugs in my sadness, my heartfelt thanks.

i'm going to miss you, Alan. you were a lovely chicken.

XXX

.

helpless in the face of a dying chicken

2011-02-20T18:46:00.000Z

one of our chickens, Alan, is dying.

why i feel the need to blog aout this, i don't know, but there you go. *shrug* i won't be posting this on Twitter, and am kinda hoping my followers ignore it, but i still feel the need to record it somewhere. i feel... i don't actually know how i feel. there's no grief, there, but there is a sadness. Alan was always such a lovely girl, and she was always my favourite. not that there was much interaction - i don't relate too deeply with non-mammals, and the girls get a little cross if you handle them too much, anyway. but i'm fond of her, y'know? she has a sweet voice, and she's always been the most placid of the two. you'd be amazed at the difference in presonality you can get between chickens. and now she's slipping away. she's in a cardboard box next to the kitchen radiator...

(here she started flapping madly, so i rushed in to see what was the matter, but i think it's that she can feel herself going and is fighting against it. Eric, the chicken we got at the same time as Alan, did much the same thing just before she died of--we think--a prolase)

she seemed fine yesterday - eating and moving around as normal with Ruby, our other chicken. but today, when hubby went out to give them their food, she was just sort of lying there on the patio. she couldn't stand up nor eat and drink. i suspect that she may have had a stroke, or something like it, as she sort of lolls to one side, as does her comb and her tail. but i don't really know. and we couldn't get an appointment with the vet's poultry expert till tomorrow at 7pm. i suspect it will be too late by then. i doubt she'll survive until bedtime, quite honestly.

earlier on, she was sitting in the box droopily, and i tried to get some sustenence into her (a thin, liquidised porridge of oats, corn and honey). she perked up a little after this - looked a little more alert. for a time. but now, she's pretty much unresponsive, and drooling a little, her eyes are closed, and she can't hold her head up. breathing's shallow, and there's nothing i can do. i could neck her, i suppose, but though i know the technique in theory (firm hold of neck and legs, pull sharply), i'm somewhat wary of putting it into practice. she's not in any obvious distress (apart from the occasional mad flappings, that is), and i wouldn't want to get it wrong - for both our sakes. i really hope she slips away quietly, and i hope she does so soon.

i'm sorry, Alan.

.

five bottles of shampoo

2011-02-16T22:39:00.000Z

this. poem. is. awesome.

thanks for sharing this, @abbivandenberg

Fred and Ginger have nothing to worry about (except maybe getting knocked over...)

2011-02-14T22:37:00.000Z

well, it's Valentines Day.

not being Catholic, nor a pawns of the greetings card industry, we don't "do" VD. what we did do, however, was go to a Valentines dance. yep, that's right - last night was our first proper dance, six weeks or so after beginning to learn how to do it properly. well... depending on the occasion, of course. i've been shaking my booty on dancefloors for many a year but, as you know, we've been learning the more formal version. specificaly the quickstep and the waltz, so far. foxtrot lessons start tomorrow. :)

N.B. hubby's a little apprehensive about this, but i'm looking forward to it. just the name of it makes me smile, imagining woodland creatures galloping up and down kicking leaf litter about...

aaanyway, our ballroom class instructors run a lesson and dance on sunday nights at the Rolls Royce Pavillion in Derby, and we decided to amble on along, to see what it was like. last night was themed along the lines of VD, of course, but i got the impression that it wasn't much different from what normally goes on.

this is the sight that greeted us as we walked in. a little early, rather than to everyone canoodling under the tables, as someone on Twitter suggested (i'm looking at you, @twiteryeanot). as we sat there looking around, hubby and i had the same thought. my mum and dad and, indeed, my much-missed nana and grandad, would perhaps have had the same view, once upon a time. about half of my immediate family, being almost solely from Derby, were employed by Rolls Royce at one time or another. mum and dad met there, when mum was 15 and dad was 19.

as it turns out, they wouldn't have had quite this view, since the building we were in had been built long after they had both left for pastures new (or South Africa as it's more usually known - they emigrated for three years not long after they were married, but that's another story)

nontheless, the sense of family and history was quite tangible, and sort of comforthing.

the evening started with a slight departure from the norm. usually, there'll be, as i mentioned, a regular lesson for an hour, and then the dancefloor is opened up for dancing and practicing. in honour of VD, however, last night's lesson was in how to smooch decorously. it was interesting, and entertaining. i had no idea there was so much involved in dancing on the spot... *grin*

hubby had a haircut especially for the occasion. it's shorter than i've ever seen it, but it suits him rather well, i think. and it will be more of a shaggy mop by the time we go to france. that's his plan, anyway...

following the lesson, we retired to the sidelines to watch as those braver / more experienced souls present began to strut their stuff. and i disappeared to the ladies' to ensure i was still gorgeous....

...yep... ;)

so we sat around for a while, marvelling at the skill of some of those present. seriously - i wish i'd taken video of one particular couple (i didn't as it seemed impolite, somehow). they were astonishing! every single dance, no matter what it was, they kicked. its. ass. and my gods, were they having a good time doing it!

eventually, however, i persuaded hubby that since we were here, it might be nice to have a dance. i was raring to go, but he was a little reluctant. understandable, really. having done it for most of my life, i'm somewhat better at making a fool of myself.

it was a waltz.

it was a disaster.

we were both a little flustered, and either one or the other would add an extra step, or forget one (i freely admit it was mostly my fault, BTW). not long after i tripped over the stage (!), the instructor (who was playing DJ for the night), jumped in, and danced a figure or two with me, reminding me to stamp my feet to keep time.

it didn't work too well, i have to say. fortunately, the song ended not long after, and we beat a hasty retreat.

i made another trip to the loo, and got lost in the warren of corridors and little rooms in the building. i happened upon a teenyweeny little dancefloor in a deserted side room, and quickly went and grabbed hubby for a private practice to restore our confidence.

it worked.

the second dance we stood up for, a quickstep, went much, much better. we still cocked it up, of course, but this time, we didn't really mind, and there was a fair bit of laughter. this evening, hubby remarked that it's much easier to dance in public when it's more structured, since everyone who's ever learned to dance like this is aware that one has to learn, and one will make mistakes (or "variations", as our instructor calls them...) when one's dancing freestyle, as in a club, etc, it's much easier to look a tit, because everyone knows that everything comes from you and you alone - there is no outside structure imposed - and any mistakes or idiocies are entirely one's own.

it was lovely.

i was at a dance, and my man was whisking me around the dance floor, and i was happy and in love. :)

the rest of the evening passed in relaxed good humour, and i am so very, very proud of both of us.

i can't wait to go again! :)

dammit, playwrights are stalking me!

2011-02-11T23:00:00.000Z

anyone who follows me on Twitter may have occasionally seen me mention BBC Radio 2. we love R2. it's eclectic and entertaining, and the music it plays (especially Mon - Wed 8 - 10 PM on the Radcliffe and Maconie programme) is frequently surprising and rather wonderful.. well... most of the time, anyway. we won't talk about its Sunday programes. or Steve Wright. why that man is allowed to continue pedling his sycophantic, irritating crap i don't know.

but i digress.

on friday nights, they have an arts programme, presented by the charming Claudia Winkelman. it's interesting and easy on the ear. but the past two fridays, something weird has being going on. they have a slot on the programme during which she reviews a current play with, generally, one of the actors involved. last week, the plot sounded somewhat familiar...

young man goes to big old house, catalogues books, odd things and mysteries happen.

just have a quick look to the right, and tell me if anything sounds familiar, would you...?

this week, the play had an unfamiliar plot, but was called "The Breath Of Life". the same name as my 2009 NaNoWriMo novel (still awaiting some TLC) the plot was nothing to do with pueblo clowns in the jungle, but still....

twice in a row...? really...?

seriously - playwrights are stalking me.

....

in other news:

does anyone else get a dreadful urge to pee when they're blogging? no?

just me, then...?

'scuse me...

.

your personal shopper...?

2011-02-06T01:11:00.000Z

well... january was an interesting blogging experience. i'm glad i did the challenge, even if i cocked it up, cheated outrageously, and only managed 25 posts out of the 30 that should have been posted. but i think i did ok....

there have been various brainfarts over the last few days that i thought, "oooh... i really ought to blog about that..." and then didn't. nothing earth-shattering. i mean, i didn't invent time-travel and then blow my nose on the formula, or anything, but just...yano...stuff. and then, of course, i forgot it all. well, apart from how much Debenhams sucks. for me, at least. i mean... ok, here's the thing:

debenhams, as any Britisher will tell you, is a big shop with branches pretty much fucking everywhere. it's a ubiquitous department store. christmas 2009, i was shopping in there for a pair of slippers for my dear ol' dad (who, incidentally, is seventy this year. EEEK! O_O ). that, for a start, should tell you something about the sort of place it is. but i digress. they have lots of brand names in there, and designers designing exclusive ranges of...er...stuff for them. mostly clothes/soft furnishings. and usually with a price to match. aaaanyway. i was on the phone to my mum whilst i was looking for these slippers - quizzing her about size, colour and style - when i came across a set of Jasper Conran jammies. now, i adore jammies. i don't wear 'em in bed - i just like to loll around the house in them and fluffy socks and my beloved purple dressing gown. particularly after i've just had a shower. these jammies were--inevitably--purple...

...incidentally, please note the clever use of the em-dash there - just for Ciara....

...and i spent a minute or so squeeing over them to my mum. i mean - i really, really liked them. i could not, however, justify spending twenty five quid on a pair of jammies when i already have several. so the JCpj's went unmolested.
fast forward past the christmas shopping to the day itself. what should i get in my christmas box from my aunty? yep - you guessed it. happy Squeaky. :)
sadly, however, they didn't fit. lovely aunty said not to worry, as she and mum were heading out on a sale spree just after christmas, and she would exchagne them for a bigger size. but they didn't have any. so they exchanged them for a gift card instead.

i tried to spend it. i really, really did. i looked for footwear, outerwear, dresses, costume jewellery, nightwear, nail polish, kitchen utensils, a hot water bottle. they had nothing for me. nuh-thing.

after a year of trying, i finally managed to spend it on friday. on a set of bathroom scales and a small (purple) leatherbound notebook. gosh - the excitement....

FFS! is it me? am i soooo hard to please?

or is it that debenhams caters to ..... well, look - i'm starting to get a picture of a typical debenham's shopper, and i'm sorry if you love the place, and the following description offends you, but this is just the image that pops into my head with increasing frequency following my frustrating experience. she's in her late fifties/early sixties. she wears uncomfortable-looking gold coloured shoes, and too much make-up. her hair sports a bad (yet expensive) dye job, and she wears a lot of navy. she carries a hideous, oversized handbag that features gold chains threaded with black ribbon, or diamante, or gold quilted fabric, or a combination of all of the above. and she has a fairly commodious wallet. i'm sure she's a very nice lady, but she really, really isn't me. i have to admit to a feeling of relief that i won't have to go in there again any time soon.

ahem. apologies. that shop has been annoying me for quite some time, now.... :-/

in other news... went climbing today. took stepson number two (the one that hasn't made me a grandma), and it was fun. he's never been before. he seemed to really enjoy it. he's expressed a wish to go back, anyway. have to say - he seemed like a natural when we sent him on to the bouldering wall. the only real trouble he had was with his stamina. he's already pretty strong, and he's always liked climbing stuff. and he has that typical Hibberd stubborn streak that makes him not want to give up on stuff when most would think "OK - maybe i can't" and cut their losses. though, to be fair, both father and son admitted defeat on more than one ocasion, today, which was almost heartening... ;o)

*giggle* and he's just nodded off in front of the football. poor love - he's had a tiring day...

writing news...writing news... welll... not much. i'm going to do some editing on cirque du seul tomorrow. and charley's still alive and... er... not exactly kicking, but he wants me to get some more of his story written, at least. still not entirely sure what, but i'll see about that one. CdeC, first. oddly enough, that seems to be getting a little easier, now the two MCs have got it on, and the story's gaining a little momentum, too. so looking forward to that. think i'm gonna tidy it up, then print it out to give it a proper read. i so can't read stuff properly on a pooter screen. especially if i've written it. the one remove of the printed page simultaneously gives me a little distance, and allows me to get further into the story. habit of a lifetime's reading of the printed word, i guess.

i still want an e-reader, though.

30 Day blog challenge: Day... aw hell, who cares...whatever...

2011-01-29T19:55:00.000Z

like i said - i'm only doing this post so i get to go through 2010's posts to do the year in blog quotes (with apologies for the raggedy layout - blogger's being a shitforbrains). this is entirely for my own amusement, and i don't expect you to stay awake for it. in fact... here - have a pillow.

january

well - never thought i'd be doing this. it's all Neil Gaiman's fault.

---

...the notion of being able to give my brain a good fettle is appealing. Y'know, like at the times when I've got thoughts buzzing around my head like a fly in a dark bedroom in summer (i can NEVER sleep when those little bastards get in!).

february

Soundtrack to this post is Empire by Kasabian, btw. Currently Apnoea. I love that song, despite its puzzling clubness. And a tiny part of that is because apnoea really does take one's breath away, and i kind of associate this with the rush of utter bliss of dancing in a club and one of your favourites comes on, and you're *already* in amongst that heaving, sweating animal on the dancefloor, and damn, it feels GOOD!!!

---

honestly, i have noooo idea what the neighbours thought as the shrieks of unrestrained joy came echoing through the ridiculously thin wall separating our bathroom from theirs....

march

Then...the raffle.
When he read out one of my tickets - 606 - I...yes...guess what I did?
The entire room heard it. 200 people - including my hero - heard me squeak with excitement.
I didn't however, have time to die of embarrassment, as a split-second before I could, he looked at me with amused approval, and said "Good squeak!" I could have died on the spot, and gone to the next life (or to the mud) content that this one had been worth it.

---

well, well, dear reader. if you were on Twitter this afternoon, round about threeish (BST), you may have seen this:
RRRRRAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!! AT LAST! AT LAST! AT LAST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YES! YES, YOU BITCH!!! YOU DIDN'T DEFEAT ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
and, shortly after, this:
*************************EPIC HAPPYDANCE**********************************
that was the sound of me finally, FINALLY!!! finishing the typing up of the bloody WIP.

april

or maybe i'm just an inveterate chatterbox with a stationary fetish?...

---

yup, you heard right, dear reader. i am a grandma. at thirty-three years old. sheesh! thanks, guys - way to go! *headsmack*

---

the only trouble with Harborough is that it's so popular (also, people have been climbing there since the 1800's), many of the holds have been polished to glassy smoothness. friction? what's that? had to be sooo careful!

---

dear reader, it hath arrived! the new bike is in da house, and poor Trob is no more. :o(

may

i have absolutely no idea what this is, other than that it turned up in my head late one night, sometime last week...

---

i just got my book in the post!!!

---

just as an aside, it occurs to me to wonder if that's where i keep my story silt, between the shores of sleeping and waking...?

---

It may not seem like a big deal but, to me, it’s the signal that, in the words of The Dooberies, summer’s on it’s way. We have a saying in this part of the world:
Ne’er shed a clout*
‘Till May be out
(*clothing)
Meaning: don’t discard yer woollies ‘till you see the blossom on the Maytree (hawthorn). Even then, it’s not an absolute guide, since the sun’s just gone in, and I’ve had to slip me cardi back on – the breeze is still pretty cold. But I care not. I care not. Because the warms are nearly here, and I miss being able to expose my skin to the bliss of the sun’s rays.

june

sadly, i think i'm possibly too old to become any kind of computer/communications geek now, and my mathematical understanding is most assuredly not up to the job. but i have such a huge admiration for geeks of *every* stripe - not just the electronic ones. if there's any sort of justice around, never mind the meek inheriting the earth - i think the geeks should.

july

Fucking hormones.

---

i keep hitting walls with "OK, smartass, what happens next, then?" scrawled all over them in dripping red paint.
but it's coming. the working title is utterly crap, and there's already a lot that needs poking, but i still have a connection with it, and ideas for what happens later (without any idea of how i'm going to get from here to there), but it's coming.... :)

august

*checks pic folders for Stuff I Have Done Recently*

----

And the concept was always guaranteed to get my attention, having spent so many hours as a child pondering the differences between dreams and reality, and how one could really, *really* tell one from the other. And if that telling would be right. So glad it really *isn't* just me. And the guy who played Eames? Hot damn! *thud*

---

we hadn't been there ten minutes before the guy on the pitch next to us was taking pictures of his kids giving the VeeDub wave and saying "Duuuuude!" in their really tiny little voices. sooooo cute!

---

seriously - how many places could this door lead to? on this plane or any other?

september

october

in case you're wondering, Talulah isn't an all-terrain vehicle, there's a dirt road that leads right through the heart of the forest. the potholes in said road, however, had me gritting my teeth and screwing my eyes shut waiting for the crunch of a grounding. thankfully, hubby managed to avoid the deepest ones.

---

ladies and gentlemen, i take great pleasure in introducing you to Max The Cat.

---

Twenty five hours to go. And I have no plot, no characters, no setting, no idea. Fuck yeah! Bring it on, NaNoWriMo!!! :D
P.S. Wish me luck, dear reader, i'm gonna need it... ;)
XXX

november

(no posts due to NaNoWriMo)

december

so there you have it. thirty days of slog, and here i am. the proud author of my THIRD NOVEL!!!
i can hardly believe it, but i've done it again, and i'm a winner again! :D

---

i was quite pleased that the results were at least readable. i tweeted them (with apologies for how depressing the second one was), and got some generous replies from some very nice people (if you're reading this, thank you all!). also an injunction never to apologise for having created something. which was lovely, and made me smile.

---

hmph. bah bloody humbug. oh, well - at least we'll get to see friends we don't see nearly often enough.
although, to be fair to myself, i *did* in fact manage to aquire, wrap and post presents for my brother, sister-in-law and niece in astonishingly good time this year. was actually quite proud of this achievement (despite the fact that the parcel also contained sis-in-law's birthday present which should have reached her by the 5th of november... *facepalm*)

---

so christmas is over. all of the rushing around is done, the presents have been given and received, too much food has been consumed, and life is beginning to show signs of returning to normal.

---

and so, there you have it, dear reader - my 2010 in blog quotes.

scintillating, eh...?

30 Day blog challenge: Fail

2011-01-27T20:44:00.001Z

nope - i'm grumpy and hormonal, and i'm not gonna do it, dammit! anyway - what kind of poor, tortured soul wants to know about my day, week or month in great detail? what are you, some kind of masochist??? 0.o the only reason i'm planning on doing tomorrow's post is that it will give me a chance to nick an idea from @abivandenberg and do the year in blog quotes....

for now, here's another picture - this time of my favourite type of cloud:

Quote from Captain Daniel, "Flying to the north of Dresden last August (on the way to Prague), we had to deviate around this Cumulonimbus, as we were just passing, it became bathed in the setting sun."

© Daniel Hunn.

(lifted from the website of The Cloud Appreciation Society)

30 Day blog challenge: Day 25 - Your day, in great detail

2011-01-25T17:40:00.000Z

it. was. a. bitch.

i have been sporadically taking notes throughout the day, in order to facilitate the writing of this post. sadly, however, i am buggered, banjaxed and otherwise bolloxed.

no post today, i'm afraid - haven't got the energy.

instead, here is a picture of something beautiful:

you're welcome.

30 Day blog challenge: Day 24 — Whatever tickles your fancy

2011-01-24T22:20:00.001Z

*checks watch*

it's definitely day 24, right?

right

sooo... how about the dfferent types of climbing? there's a bit of a visual glossary at the bottom, if all the equipment confuses you. ...it still confuses the hell out of me, sometimes... there are several other types of climbing, but these are, i think, the three main types...

Trad

traditional, obviously. this is the type of climbing you're most likely to be familliar with. it's the type that requires all sorts of curious and arcane equipment, such as nuts, friends or cams, quickdraws, rope, karabiners or krabs, straps, tape, harness, rock shoes, chalk bags, hexes, helmets, belay (pronounced bee-lay) devices, and about a million other curious and exciting-looking bits and bobs. doing it properly costs a bleedin' fortune, mate. it's done on rock that has cracks, fissures and pockets in which to lodge your cams, hexes and nuts...
*pause for juvenile sniggering*
...and is tricky. you put your safety equipment in as you go, and this takes practice and experience. if you cock up the placement of a nut, for example...
*pauses for more juvenile sniggering*
...when your second comes up and puts strain on it, it can pop out of the rock and whack you painfully in the head, or other parts. same goes for hexes (which are really more like giant nuts than anything else) and cams. also, if you fall, you want to be goddamned sure that shit's in there nice and tight. a fall is terrifying enough, believe me, without "unzipping" your nuts (yeah, yeah yeah - when you've finished.....jeez - how old are you?) all the way down the rockface.

Sport

this requires much, much less equipment than trad. simply rope, harness, quickdraws, rock shoes, belay device, chalk bag, and a helmet, if you've got any sense. this type of climbing is done on much smoother rock walls with few or no places to put safety equipment. on a sport climb, you clip a quickdraw to the eyebolts already drilled into the rock (by your friendly local or national climbing or mountaineering organisation), and then run your rope through the other end of the quickdraw as you go. it will have an extra-strong loop or clip at the top, called a lower-off point. (and if you've seen the movie 127 hours - awesome, BTW - this is the piece of metal he kisses towards the end) when you reach that, you clip the rope through it, and then get lowered down, collecting your quickdraws alng the way (or leaving them in place for your second to collect when they climb up).

Free

this, as far as i'm concerned, is the preserve of nutters.

using no equipment other than a chalkbag and some rock shoes, you climb your chosen route with nothing to arrest your fall, should you slip. *shudder*

some people like to do it naked, too.

Glossary

rock shoes. these have a soft upper, sticky, smooth rubber soles, and generally a pointed toe (to allow you to get easier putchase in those tiny, tricky cracks

on the left are cams or "friends" - these can be squeezed to close the head, and then inserted into the crack where the head expands and (hopefully) grips the rock. top right are karabiners, or "krabs". these are hugely useful things which clip the various parts of your climbing rig together. bottom right are nuts. these are carefully shaped nuggets of metal which can be inserted into cracks and then, by virtue of their odd shape, wedged tight. the wire on the end allows you to clip a krab to it, and then run your rope through the krab. bottom middle is a nut key. one of my best friends on a trad climb (since i'm usually the second - hubby being a better climber). this marvellous and wonderful little device allows you to lever a nut out from a crack if it has become wedged. absolutely invaluable!

quickdraws. these allow for quick and (relatively) easy clipping on to various bits of kit.

belay devices come in many weird and wonderful shapes. this is the bit that the second uses to hold the rope taut without getting rope burn should the climber fall. it's a sort of friction lock, working on the pulley principle. i can hold hubby's weight with three fingers using one of these.

the chalk bag. this hangs from the harness, or a belt. it can hold loose chalk or, as in the picture, a chalk ball. this is loose chalk held inside a mesh which is released when you squeeze the ball. generally insisted on by indoor climbing walls as, if you fall, the chalk doesn't explode everywhere.

And Finally...

i urge you to watch this video. it will blow your mind. takes a while to load, but it's worth it...

30 Day blog challenge: Day 23 — A recipe

2011-01-23T22:19:00.000Z

dammit! i cocked up - day 21 should have been a recipe, not a website! *headdesk*

very well, then - i shall recipe-ize now. i'm a reluctant and hit-and-miss cook, but occasionally i add a dish to my limited repetoire. here's one i invented not too long ago, and it's well tasty. had it yesterday, in fact.

chilli-chorizo-noodle-thingy - serves two

ingredients:

one jar Napolina chilli & tomato pasta sauce.
enough noodles for two (or four if you do what i do and give the chickens the leftover noodles) you can use any pasta you like, but i prefer noodles - better taste and texture. and i can't cook pasta very well, all right?
about 5-6 inches of chorizo (approx 1 inch thick)
about 200g mushrooms (i use chestnut mushrooms)
a couple of smallish onions
grated chese to taste (i use gruyere)
all ingredient quantities are approximate - experiment with quantities
a couple of pasta bowls

method:

chop the onions, mushrooms and chorizo, chuck 'em in a pan with a bit of oil, and simmer on a low heat until the juices have mixed and the onion is more-or-less transparent
toss in the jar of sauce (rinse out the jar with a little water and chuck that in too), and mix it all up.
allow to simmer whilst you cook the noodles
dump the noodles in the pasta bowls with the tomatoey/mushroomy/chorizoey/oniony stuff on top.
sprinkle a bit of grated cheese on top to taste
scoff with "om nom nom" noises

ded simple, and ded tasty - just the way i like it. ^_^

30 Day blog challenge: Day 21 - a website & Day 22 - a YouTube video

2011-01-22T13:54:00.000Z

i seem to have spent most of this challenge not quite sticking to the rules in one way or another. but it's my blog, and i can do what i like. so there. *pouts*

actually, i was knackered last night, and just couldn't face going through all of the rigmarole of blogging (i think i've explained before somewhere this month what a pain in the ass it is to just get online, so i won't go over it again), and besides, i was busy putting a face-mask on, wearing jammies, watching Buffy The Vampire Slayer, and cuddling wih an equally knackered hubby.

so.

two posts for the price of one.

first: a website.

i played with the idea of linking to Neil Gaiman's Website, since it was sort of my introduction to the wider wonderful weirdness of the web, but that's too obvious. another i looked at is the cheezburger network, because i like to laugh, and i'm guaranteed a chuckle from there. but everybody's seen that website in one form or another. i mean, everybody knows what a LOLcat is, right?

so how about xkcd? it's (quote) "a webcomic of romace, sarcasm, math and language". basically, it's mostly stick figures making whimsical jokes. i admit to not getting all of the jokes, since a lot of them depend on the reader being a cleverer and more familliar with popular culture and technology than i. but i get most on some level, and it's endearingly and unashamedly geeky. click on the "random" button to get a fairly wide selection of cartoons about a surprisingly wide range of topics (though physics and technology are heavily favoured). although there's a pretty good selection here, too. *chuckle*

and today's offering: a YouTube Video.

aw, c'mooooon - there's f**kin' billions of these things!

the most recent one i watched was for Amanda Palmer's awesome new single: Map Of Tasmania.

geographical / cultural note: "map of Tasmania" is an Australian euphemism for female pubic hair, as the island of Tasmania is vaguely triangular in shape.... (hence the catcall: "Hey, love - show us yer map of Tasmania!") i love the song, and the video - as well as looking great - made me LMAO.

enjoy! :oD

30 Day blog challenge: Day 20 — A hobby of yours

2011-01-20T21:23:00.001Z

this could be tricky...

i don't really have any hobbies, as such. well - i don't really think about the things i do as hobbies, anyway.

i think i might have to cheat again...

first and foremost, of course, is reading, but that's less of a hobby and more of a way of life. i'm sure it's that way for many of those who might read this post, since most will follow the link i post on Twitter, and most of my Twitterati are writers of one stripe or another. if anyone else comes across this...

hi! say hello, whydontcha? i'm quite friendly, you know. :o)

i suppose i've had quite a few hobbies at one time or another in my life - but nothing i do constantly. i have a butterfly mind (read: short attention span and limited staying power). amongst the activities i do or have done in the past, and in no particular order, are:

making greeting cards
origami
macrame
knitting
making friendship bracelets
climbing
writing
aikido (though that is one i will never be going back to - faaaaaar too active XP)
writing out the lyrics to my favourite Iron Maiden songs (that one was a loooong time ago - before the interwebz, even! )
...er...does listening to music count? probably not...
dancing (not just ballroom - i used to do ballet. i admit to giving it up aged seven, but it still counts, right...?)

there are probably more, but i'm buggered if i can remember them at the moment. and i haven't forgotten (even though i haven't been in months) that i said one day i might write about the different kinds of climbing, and what each entails (in the case of free climbing, f'r instance, utter madness...)

as you can probably tell from the list, i have the urge to be creative, or at least make/create stuff. sadly, i'm hampered by a lack of creativity, and my tendency to be easily dist.... oooh! shiny thing! O_O

do you have any hobbies, dear reader? care to share...?

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30 Day blog challenge: Day 19 — A talent of yours

2011-01-19T21:00:00.001Z

as i mentioned yesterday, i have several utterly useless but vaguely entertaining talents/party tricks/whatevers, but i'm going to be a good girl tonight, and pick just one.

all right, dear reader - do you remember the lengthy weirdness that was Twin Peaks? i was at a very impressionable age (14) when i first saw it. (i say first, because i think ive seen it twice since - still makes very, very little bloody sense, though!) so there are certain scenes that left a vivid image burned on my brain (David Duchovny in drag, anyone...?), but the one in which Audrey Horne auditioned for a position (snigger) at One-Eyed Jacks stands out, because i have mastered the skill which she demonstrated in order to get herself hired. anyone else remember that scene...?

;o)

so come on - share - what's your talent? don't be shy - we've all got at least one. :o)
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30 Day blog challenge: Day 18 - Whatever tickles your fancy.

2011-01-18T17:58:00.001Z

Dammit, I’ve been scuppered! Because i had been thinking about this one for a few days, wondering what i could share that wasn’t likely to scar you for life. And realised i have certain bizarre and completely useless talents. But that’s tomorrow’s post. And i can’t just sit here recording random brainfarts, can i? I suppose i could tell you about what I’m doing tonight... but I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it before...

Well, hell if i have - I’m gonna tell you again.

Just after Christmas, i suggested to hubby that i might be vaguely interested in taking ballroom dancing lessons. To his credit, he barely flinched and, eventually (if reluctantly), agreed. Quite apart from being a bloke (well...the last time i looked, anyway... ;o), and that not being a traditionally “manly” pursuit, hubby is, whilst not shy, nor introverted, somewhat the opposite of a show-off. He quiet, and speaks usually only when he has something to say worth hearing. In contrast, of course, to me, who chatters on about inanities almost constantly.
Aaanyway.
This extends to dancing in public. He doesn’t. Well... not often. I would even go so far as to say seldom. And he was not keen. And he got less keen as the fateful day approached.
But he did it, for me. And to both our surprise (and my utter delight), he enjoyed it.
We went again last Tuesday, and he enjoyed it again, despite some frustrations at not being able to get a new step we’d been taught. This led to a little fun, actually. Wanting to practice the move, so we didn’t make fools of ourselves tonight, and our house not even being big enough to swing a cat, we needed somewhere else to practice our quickstep corners.
Our house is on a main road, not far down which is the entrance to our local tennis club. The drive to the club goes down between the houses and emerges behind the gardens. Our house backs on to the grass courts. The chain link fence is very useful, since it allows us to see through the trees at the end of the garden to the grass beyond, which (visually, at least), extends our garden. At the end of the drive is a car park.
After dark on Saturday night, we ambled on down there, and practiced. It was funny, and annoying, and irritating, and funny, and dizzying. Spinning round and round trying to get the steps right, I’m surprised we didn’t end up lying in a tangled heap. But we managed. It helps, I find, if I don’t try to lead… >_< We didn’t quite get it, but I think we got better…
I guess I’ll find out in an hour or so…

And in reply to @AislingWeaver, who responded to my cry for help:

Purple. Because it’s sumptuous and delicious, and the right shade can feed my soul. X

30 Day blog challenge: Day 17 — An art piece (painting, drawing, sculpture, etc.)

2011-01-17T21:59:00.000Z

ooooh.... *rubs hands together*

i've been looking forward to this one. not because i have a great deal to say about this subject. as the saying goes: "I don't know much about art, but i know what i like." or rather, i don't. stuff can grow on me (y'know, like mould), or it can flake off. but there is an awful lot of strange beauty out there, and some of it fills me with bliss. such as the piece i've chosen to share here. it's a piece of sculpture that resides in St Pancras Station in London. the station itself is, quite frankly, a work of art. it is, essentially, a vast dead-end barn, with a sweepingly majestic arched glass roof, where the trains arrive forwards, and leave backwards. it is the sation where the train that travels from Derby to London terminates. i've only been been there twice in the last three years, but both times, i spent a lot of time just looking at the building and the sculpture in it, and the poetry inscribed on the floor. the station has spent many years being lovingly restored to its Victorian glory, and my god, it's gorgeous! *sigh* oh yes - and the beautiful iron beams (now painted a lovely sky-blue) were, i'm proud to say, manufactured not two miles from where i'm currently sitting.

oh, look - i can't just show you the sculpture - i have to share the station, too! everything, in fact! :oD lets face it - i consider the whole thing a work of art.

look, i'm not going to go on and on about this (actually, i might yet - stay tuned, funsters!), but there's a couple of things i really want to show you....

first is this:

this wonderful, and somewhat scruffy, chap (rendered in glorious life and wind-blown motion by martin jennings) is Sir John Betjeman - a beloved English "poet of the people".

he led the fight to stop the demolition of the beautiful facade of the station (the Midland Hotel, which adorns the front of the station) in the 1960s and is, for that reason, commemorated here. (see this article for a little more info).

it's his poetry you can see inscribed on the cumbrian slate on which he stands.

it reads:

"And in the shadowless unclouded glare / Deep blue above us fades to whiteness where / A misty sea-line meets the wash of air."

he's gazing in wonder at the beautiful roof of the (unromantically named) Barlow Train Shed:

trust me - the photo does not do it justice.

and so to the piece of sculpture that started all of this off.:

"the meeting place" by paul day

again, the photos don't do it justice. it's stunning, and brings tears to my eyes.

since i took these photos in 2008 (coincidentally on my way to meet Neil Gaiman, though i didn't know it at the time...), more has been added around the base of the plinth, depicting... well, all sorts of railway-related things, and it. is. awesome. astonishing in its detail and artistry.

so there you go - Saint Pancras Station.

oh, and one other thing, because i can rarely stop at one....

this painting, which has hung in our front room for many years, was painted by none other than my talented hubby *tries not to burst with pride*

30 Day blog challenge: Day 15 — A fanfic & Day 16 — A song that makes you cry (or nearly)

2011-01-16T00:29:00.000Z

yes, yes, i know - cheating again. in my defence, i can only say that for the last hour and a half, i have been wrestling with my internet connection, so you wuld have had day 15's post on day 15 if my sparkles hadn't fizzled and caused repeated headdesking. i am now back to using my phone as a modem, as it's far too late at night to be dealing with someone in a call centre who does not have English as their mother tongue and who will inevitably ask me "did you try turning it off and then back on again?" (to which the answer, of course, is "YES!!!" >_< )

ok, day 15 - a fanfic.

so.... what? one i wrote, or one i enjoy? makes no difference either way, since i neither read nor write fanfic. i know lots of people do. and gain a very great deal of enjoyment from those acts. i confess, though, it's not a thing that has ever appealed to me. for me as a reader and writer, i cannot see the point. as a reader, i want the magic that only comes from the mind of the original author. as a writer, i wouldn't want to mess with beloved characters, and i would be forever comparing my work with the original and finding it wanting. i have enough problems with confidence, thankyouverymuch.. this doesn't mean, though, that i look down on it, or disdain it - i just don't think it's for me.

...er...sorry.

day 16 - a song that makes you cry (or nearly)

well, one we've had already - on day one of this challenge, in fact. but there is another that leaps almost immediately to mind, and it's this one:

Two Little Boys by Rolf Harris

alternatively, this one is achingly poignant, and the more i listen to it, the sadder it gets. it makes my soul weep.

Famous Blue Raincoat by Leonard Cohen

P.S. these may or may not show up, the aforementioned problems and a new (to) me feature of Blogger may let me down. let me know if they do, and if the songs make you cry, too...

30 day blog challenge: Day 14 — A non-fictional book

2011-01-14T23:11:00.000Z

once again, i'm umming and ahhing between two. one by a hero of mine (astonishingly, not Neil Gaiman. yes - i have other heroes! *le gasp*) and another by one of my favourite DJs (of which there are few).

i read very few non-fiction books. in fact, it may even be two a year or less. just for fun, i'm going to try to remember and list all of the non-fiction books i've ever read (and please forgive my faulty memory)...

life on air - david attenborough (the former)
thank you for the days - mark radcliffe (the latter - there's that lovely word again! :)
are you dave gorman? - dave gorman and danny wallace
yes man - danny wallace
a history of the british isles (or 2000 years of upper class twits in charge) {or soething along those lines, anyway} - john lloyd (er...i think...?)
three by a lady whose name i can't recall, nor the book titles, but they concerned her experiences of going off to live the life of a scottish island crofter in the 1950s and were very intersting, and often extremely funny
several by james herriot, a country vet in the yorkshire dales - also incredibly funny and often very poignant.
one by gervais finn, possibly called the other side of the dale (?)
in search of captain zero, and, can't you get along with anyone? - alan c weisbecker
boy - roald dahl
red dog - louis de bernieres
biographies of pink floyd, billy connolly, bill hicks
wicked plants - amy stewart

that's about it. an average of not even one per year that i've been an inveterate, obsessive reader. or even a willing one, really (my gran gave me a copy of the famous five when i was abought eight, and i turned into a reader overnight). for those who really care, this timespan is 26 years - longer than my sister-in-bloggery, Liz, has been alive.

argh. *feels old*

ok, having done that list, i realise that can't pick just one. somehow, it's harder to pick from a small group than it is from a big group. it's not that i don't want to hurt the others' feelings, or anything. well....ok, maybe a bit...but books are people too!

*cough*

but it depends on what i might think you're after as to which one i'm more likely to wave under your nose saying, "you HAVE to read this!!!"

aaaaaaanyway.....

a small list to chose from. although, thinking about it, there's one i have yet to mention that stands head-and-shoulders above all of these. above any book ever written, in fact.

for me, at least, the hands-down winner is this nonfiction book.

i heart it. thanks for teaching me about it, grandad. X

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30 day blog challenge: Day 13 — A fictional book

2011-01-13T21:39:00.000Z

...and this means....what...exactly? an imaginary book? or a book of fiction? badly-worded heading there, i feel. ambiguous. however, having pondered and debated with hubby, and considered tomorrow's title, i think it's probably the latter.

(N.B. weird wordie that i am, i specifically arranged the first part of that paragraph just so i could use the word "latter". i've always been fond of that word...)

but... haven't we already had "Your favourite book"? why put in two? as a lifelong bibliophle, i have to say i really couldn't give a monkey's chuff. opportunity to think and talk about books? i'm in! :oD

but what to pick? what to pick?

how'bout One Fine Day In The Middle Of The Night - the one i'm reading right now?

or, more accurately re-reading. for the third, or possibly fourth time. it's by Christopher Brookmyre - an author who comes second only in my affections to Neil Gaiman. principally because of how much he makes me laugh. and i'm not talking chuckling, here - i'm talking great, guffawing belly-laughs.
...not all the time. oh, no. but then who wants that? where nuance? where tragedy? &c. &c.
...but he did write a scene that had me laughing so hard that, desperate though i was to read it to a puzzled and mildly alarmed hubby, i. just. couldn't. it involved discovery of accidental cannibalism, an ice-bucket, and synchronised vomiting of epic proportions. oh, and there was the one where, with the careful (or, more accurately, careless) application of a snooker table, a mercenary accidentally cut his own head off. seriously - one of the literary comedy highlights of my entire life. so elegantly and logically set up, so gracefully executed (if you'll forgive the pun >_< ).... i'm in awe.
and the titles of his books are often works of art in themselves. for example - who wouldn't be intrigued by a book titled "A Big Boy Did It And Ran Away"...?

or "All Fun And Games Until Somebody Loses An Eye"...?

now, admittedly, OFDITMOTN doesn't contain as many guffaws, but the part where the recently-retired policeman get's knocked unconscious by a disembodied arm falling from the sky is pretty funny....

the plot centres around a school reunion, which takes place on a decommisioned oil rig that has been converted into "The Floating Island Paradise Resort". which subsequently gets attacked by a bunch of inept mercenaries hell-bent on slaughtering everyone on board. one of the things Brookmyre does so very well is paint schooldays, and the relationships, language, politics and culture peculiar to that environment. several of his novels concern this particular aspect of the human experience. but there's so much more than that in there. Brookmyre pokes fun at everything. sometimes affectionately, sometimes with loathing and incredulity at the stuidity and malice of "the people". but always with inventive accuracy.

dear reader, i urge you to read this book. or, indeed, anything by this master storyteller (apart from Boiling a frog which, for reasons i won't go into, i enjoyed the least, but whose title is still a wonderful thing, and perfectly encapsulates the essence of the book). invariably fast-paced, intelligent and funny, they are joyous. and i'm bloody dying for him to write another. i'm twitching like a junkie needing a fix.

for your consideration: the two mentioned earlier (particularly AFAGUSLAE, which is about the power and strength of motherhood, and women in general, and has some really cool gadgets in it).

all images borrowed from www.fantasticfiction.com. i'll be happy to put them back if they're not happy about this.

30 Day blog challenge: Day 12 - whatever tickles your fancy

2011-01-12T12:05:00.001Z

blogging this at work today, in my dinner hour. this is because i'm so fecking tired. tonight's plan includes good food (chippy tea...NOM!!!), shower, jammies, snuggles with hubby and kitteh, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Christopher Brookmyre's One Fine Day In The Middle Of The Night, and. nothing. else. noooooo interwebz for Squeaky, oh no siree!

i noticed amongst all of the "your favourite this" and "your favourite that" that there was nowhere for "your favourite poem" in the 30 Day blog challenge. so here, for your delectation and delight, is my offering for day 12 (and the sharp-eyed amongst you may notice a developing theme - it's not my fault, i should have been born with feathers... )

High Flight

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there

I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air.

Up, up the long delirious, burning blue,

I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace

Where never lark, or even eagle flew -

And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod

The high untresspassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

---

Pilot Officer Gillespie Magee

No 412 squadron, RCAF

Killed 11 December 1941

Rest in peace

---

---
N.B. the author of these beautiful words was, i believe, Canadian.
which ought to please my sister-in-bloggery, over at .Square Mug. ;o)
---

this blog challenge has been fun so far, but i have discovered the downside.

we live in a teenytiny house with very little space for desks, tables, etc. and certainly not enough space for the pooter to have a seat of it's very own. so i fold it away somewhere convenient whenever it's not being used. this means it's a flatout pain in the arse to get it out, find a comfy (or not-so-comfy if we're talking about our kitchen chairs >_<) seat, untangle the cables, plug everything in, wait for three hours whilst it goes through its customary warming-up-and-crashing cycle once or twice, and actually get the interwebz to work. therefore, i rarely go on it if i haven't already got something i need to do (blogging, shopping, &c. &c.). however, when i have done the needed thing, i usually find myself happily nattering away to people on Twitter and elsewhere, having half-a-dozen conversations at once, and then realizing that if i don't get to bed soon, i will turn into a pumpkin. and then spend the next day being a rather grumpy zombie and throwing virtual food at @thextraman.

Squeaky needs her sleep. so tonight she needs an early night. and by golly, she ain't gonna get one unless she stays away from that damn machine! i will likely, however, be tweeting from my phone, which is an altogether different prospect, since phonetweeting is a right royal pain in the arse (on mine, at least), therefore i don't natter nearly as much.

so pleasepleaseplease, dear reader, if you see me tweeting after about 10 PM, tell me off and send me to beddybyes?

kthxbai! XXX

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30 day blog challenge: Day 11 — A photo of you taken recently

2011-01-11T21:38:00.003Z

h'm. not too many of these, either. i'm not the most photogenic of bods.

hmmmm..... *flicks through recent photies*

ok.... here's one. dreadful photo of me, but then they mostly are. i chose it coz it's a good one of my pretty kitteh. ^_^

it's terrifying how much i'm starting to look like my brother as i get older. >_<

alternatively, there's this one - taken in a bathroom at a wedding i attended in the summer. i guess that still counts, right? i mean, geologically speaking, it's practically now...

i don't get dressed up very often. you can tell, can't you...?

(spot the wonky eyeliner...)

30 day blog challenge: Day 10 — A photo of you taken over ten years ago

2011-01-10T21:21:00.001Z

i don't have many of these, but this one, i'm very fond of. apologies for the quality, but as my scanner's packed away, i had to take a pic of the original on my phone, upload it to twitpic, and then link to the image *phew*. a little roundabout, but hey - i've never been very good at making techie things easy on myself...

it was taken when i was about 18 months old in my Nana and Grandad's back garden.

N.B. the caption is what my mum wrote on the back of the photie...

May 1978

Running away from paddling pool

(she screamed when i put her in 'coz she doesn't like cold water)

(or even lukewarm)

30 day blog challenge: Day 09 — A photo you took

2011-01-09T12:46:00.000Z

I took this on my phone during our trip to Cornwall and Dorset ~~this~~ last year. god in heaven, the wind was cold on that beach! we are soaking up the last rays of the long light as the sun sinks into the English Channel over Brean Beach. it was a beautiful moment.

phone

2011-01-09T12:27:00.000Z

another challenge from @catinabaglady, this one somewhat smuttier than the last.
it still makes me blush to post something like this, but i'm sure i'll get over it... i hope...

Phone

When her mobile sang out from the bedside table, it dragged her out of a deep, exhausted slumber that she had not been in for very long. Squinting her eyes against the bright morning light, she just about managed to find it and slide it open. Falling back against the rucked pillows, she croaked, "Hello?"
The mildly amused voice on the other end sent a little flare of joy through her belly, and went a long way towards dragging her further from sleep.
"Good morning, my pet."
Smiling sleepily, "Good morning, Sir."
"Still in bed?"
"Not been sleeping well, Sir. I miss you."
She could hear the smile in his voice as he said, "Poor thing - it's hard for you when I'm away, isn't it?"
"Yes, sir. But I know you have to go."
"I miss you too, my pet."
She felt a smug satisfaction at that. Guilt, though, and sympathy, came hot on its heels. Poor thing - he must be aching.
"I'm so sorry to hear that, Sir." She snuggled a little deeper into the quilt and pillows, imagining his arms around her, stroking her, soothing away her loneliness, and his.
"Have you been a good girl?"
"Yes, Sir."
"Not been touching yourself while I've been away, have you?"
Pride crept into her voice. It had been hard work, while missing him so much this past week, to keep her hands off herself, as instructed. But she had done it. Sometimes, she'd found herself doing extra housework, despite her keeping herself and the apartment flawless and spotless, just to try and distract herself from that burgeoning itch that had got stronger and stronger as the days had gone on. But somehow, she had managed. "No, sir - I haven't."
She heard the smile widen, slightly. "That's my good girl. I bet it's been difficult, hasn't it? I bet your pussy's been nasty with your juices for days, hasn't it?"
She shivered with desire. "Yes, sir - it has."
"Is it now? Are you a dirty girl - all slippery from wanting?"
Her breathing and heartbeat began to speed up, a little. "Yes, sir."
"Are you sure? Put your fingers down there and feel, my pet - tell me how wet you are."
Slowly, she did as she was told, sliding her slightly trembling hand down her belly, through her neatly trimmed bush and finally reaching her naked pussy lips which were, indeed, slippery with her juices. She gasped when her fingertips brushed over her engorged clit.
"Tell me."
"I'm wet for you, sir. My pussy's dripping. My clit's budded hard and aching to feel your tongue lapping it." She slid a finger inside herself, then out again, with great difficulty. "My cunt's tight and hot - it's twitching to the sound of your voice, Sir."
His breathing was getting a little heavier. "Do you want to put your fingers in there, you dirty little slut?"
She gasped as she felt her cunt spasm harder. "Yes, sir... oh, yes please, sir..."
"Very well - you may have three."
"Oh, thank you, sir!" she moaned, back arching as she slid three fingers into her pussy and began to slide them in and out of herself, juices flooding around and between her fingers.
"Fuck yourself then, my pet. Dig your fingers deep. Squeeze them as hard as you can with that tight little pussy I love so much. Let me hear how much a dirty little slut like you enjoys playing with herself."
And she did. Slamming her hand into herself repeatedly and wetly, she moaned and gasped and arched and trembled. Soon, he heard a change in her breathing, even as his became hoarse and ragged at the sound of his pet pleasuring herself so very, very far away.
"P... Please, Sir..." she could barely control her voice enough to ask, "Please m... may I come, Sir?"
A deep breath, then: "Yes - come for me, my pet - let me hear how much you miss me."
She let go. Her back arched until only her shoulders, buttocks and heels were touching the bed, and she wailed loud and long, an answering groan coming from the phone still clamped to her ear.
Collapsing on the bed, she lolled and panted, trying to get her breath back, her heart thundering.
From the phone came a hoarse whisper. "I love you, darling. I'll see you tonight."
"I love you, too. And I can't wait. Take care."
"You too, my pet."
As she closed the phone, the bright morning sun caught the gold ring on her left hand. She was still aching for him - there was no other feeling in the world like his cock slamming inside her. But she only had to wait a few more hours to see her husband again.

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30 Day blog challenge: Days 07 & 08 - cheating a little.

2011-01-08T12:16:00.000Z

i'm going to stand up and proclam right now that i'm going to cheat. day 07 was supposed to be a photo that makes you happy, and day 08 was supposed to be a photo that makes you angry or sad. there's a couple of problems here.

firstly, last night was mostly a cuddling-wih-hubby-and-kitty-in-front-of-the-telly night. Friday of the first week back after christmas, an we were both fairly buggered and feeling snuggly, so i decided to give blogging a miss for the night. i'm allowed to do that, right? i just committed myself to doing two posts today.

and then i realised that no matter how much i racked my brains, i couldn't come up with a photo that makes me angry or sad. this is probably down to deeply ingrained habits of Black Dog avoidance. i tend to blank out stuff like this. so, y'know, just insert pics of abused animals and people, facist pride marches, tabloid front pages, &c, &c, and you'll get the idea. i refuse to go searching for this shit, and if you want to, that's your bag.

so on to the happy pic. there are many photos in my library that make me happy, but i guess i only get to pick one. the winner is one that follows on (sort of) from the reason my last post was as it was, and has never actually been in my electronic archive, since i wasn't a member of the body electric when t was taken. the only reason i can post it here is that i used it to test my scanner one day (which is currently packed away, and i'm not of a mind to go rumaging)

as you may remember, two days ago was our wedding anniversary. but that was just the day when we signed the bit of paper which the law recgnises as making us married, and it was just us and two friends as witnesses. the really important day in a spiritual sense came six months later, on june 19th, 2005. that was the day we were handfasted in our local woods, by a lake, surrounded by friends and family. handfasting, by the way, is a Pagan wedding ceremony. now, hubby and i are both athiests, but we both revere nature, and find all the wonder in the cosmos that we could possibly wish for, without the intervention of imaginary friends. so i guess you might call us athiests wth Pagan leanings, if you wished to label us.

this was taken at the point in the ceremony when we were literally handfasted. Martin the priest has just wrapped a plaited ribbon around our hands to symbolise our being bound together in love. behind hubby's shoulder you can see The Most Wonderful Woman In The World, representing the element of water.

the thing that makes me happiest about this photo, apart from all the beautiful memories of the best day of my life, is the look on hubby's face.

30 day blog challenge - day 06 - whatever tickles your fancy

2011-01-06T11:50:00.001Z

well, that's a very useful coincidence.

you see, today is my wedding anniversary. also, my first-day-of-being-together anniversary. the former is 6 years, the latter 15, and tonight, we go out to eat lovely foods. so i won't really have time to do any blogging tonight - therefore i blog at work. but what to blog?

it just so happens that i was inspired (and challenged, by the by, by @catinabaglady - hi, princess! :) *waves*), to write a little something inspired by the ubiquitous ladder in my tights. so i shall post it for today's 30 day challenge offering.

Ladder.

It’s dark, and cold, and I’m bleary. Slumping into my usual seat, I scrub my face with a gloved hand and yawn. The rumbling of the bus’s engine is soporific, and I resist the urge to close my sore eyes. Damn winter mornings.

Yawning again, I glance around at the other passengers, and my eyes widen a little in surprise. The bus fairy is here.

Sounds stupid, doesn’t it? Indeed, I feel stupid thinking it. But that’s the name she’s earned for herself in my head. In her early twenties, her hair a permanent and artful birds nest, her make up subtly fantastical, and her clothes the ultimate in hippy chic.

I mostly see her in the summer, haven’t seen her for months now. I was beginning to get the weird notion that she was a creature of the warm weather, and that she was hibernating in a den of soft furs somewhere north of the Arctic Circle, the lights of the aurora singing pleasant dreams to her as she slept.

But no – here she is. I steal surreptitious glances at her as the bus begins to move, and she crosses one leg over the other, left over right, settling deeper into her seat. Looks tired, no make up, and her torso is bundled up in many scarves and an old army jacket against the biting chill. My eyes travel down her body to where her legs poke out of the bottom of the swaddled mass of her clothing. Feet and calves tucked up warm and snug in the most enormously shaggy furry boots I’ve ever seen. She wears them in summer, too, but they’re far more suited to this bitter cold, and I envy her undoubtedly warm feet.

Incongruous to the rest of her attire, though, her legs are encased only in mustard coloured tights. Sort of a soft, yellowy brown colour which, on anyone else, would look awful. Somehow, though, her fey charm carries them off with aplomb and certainty. I’ve seen them before, of course, and they must be favourites, because they are a little the worse for wear. I notice a snag, here and there, and a ladder. On the inside of her right knee, it starts just below the top of her calf and travels up, only a quarter of an inch wide, and disappears underneath her crossed leg and the hem of her skirt. I find myself staring, and quickly flick my eyes away as she moves, settling her body a little, burrowing a little further down into her protective cocoon.
I know it’s rude to stare, but gradually, my eyes make their way back to that tiny, exposed strip of soft, creamy flesh at her knee, and I marvel. I wonder what it would feel like to run the tip of my index finger slowly along that gap. To feel the yield and warmth of that beautiful, pale skin. My eyes half-close as the reverie overtakes me. Half-dreaming, I watch her shift uncomfortably, and re-cross her legs; right over left this time. Those tights must be near the end of their useful life, as the movement causes the ladder to grow. As her right leg settles in place, the ladder widens slightly, and a pinstripe run bursts from the top. I can almost hear the faint zipping noise, as it races along her soft inner thigh, and into the darkness under the hem of her skirt, ridden up now to mid-thigh. Now I have a perfect view of the ladder. It’s a cliché’, I know – or a bad chat-up line – but just at that point, my ethereal finger is replaced my the tip of my tongue as I gently trace the path of the ladder along that soft, sensitive flesh. Would she be ticklish, I wonder? Would she giggle as my tongue’s tip traced its way around the bend of her knee, along her inner thigh? Would she sigh and open her legs a little, to allow my tongue to continue its journey? All the way to the end of that ladder? How far up does it run, I wonder? All the way…?

The bus jerks and hisses as we reach a stop, shaking me out of my head and back into the real world. Even as I feel a blush heating my face, my traitor eyes follow her body as she stands and prepares to leave the bus. Just before I force my eyes to the floor, though, I swear I catch a glint in her eyes.

A half-smile quirking the corner of her mouth…

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30 day blog challenge: Day 05 — Your favourite quote

2011-01-05T21:13:00.000Z

“People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.”

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross quotes (Swiss-American psychiatrist and author )

30 day blog challenge - day 04 - your favourite book

2011-01-04T17:13:00.001Z

...i'm sorry, what?

...'scuse me whilst i go ask someone which their favourite child is....

i mean... what sort of a question is that to ask a bibliophile?! come on - be realistic!

ok, ok - enough with that. i have, as i'm sure you can imagine, manymany favourite books, for manymany reasons. but if it counts, above all of these for sheer depth and scope and variety and storytelling and achievement is The Sandman, by... oh, come on - surely you know me well enough by now...?

i could witter on about my myriad second favourites, but i'm not feeling too funky today, so i think i'll just leave it there, and head on over to Neil Gaiman's blog, to see if he's officially announced the happy news, yet...

(added edit: he did! soooo happy for them both! :)

30 day blog challenge: Day 03 — Your favourite television programme

2011-01-03T22:12:00.000Z

*sigh* again a hard choice. there are, actually, two. one that i'm sure everyone in the English-speaking world with a telly (and most without), will have heard of, and one that is more of a cult thing and is, sadly, no longer being made.

the first is, of course, Doctor Who. how could it not be? prime-time british scifi with this depth and scope - the acting, the storylines, the effects - everything is totally primo, and has been since dear ol' Russell Davies revived it and made it as it was always meant to be made. i will plan my weekend around it's showing, and even cut a family christmas day visit short in order to race home and watch it. i think my family understand...

the second? well - i am unable to adequately describe the surreal genius that was Green Wing. in short, it's a sitcom set in a hospital. but it's more - oh, so much more - than that. characters say and do bizarre things, time speeds up and slows down at will, the dialogue is sharp and often hysterically funny, and every time i watch it (yes, we have the DVDs of both series and the special), i notice some new weirdness or nuance that just keeps on giving. there's never been anything like it before or since, and i treasure it as something that will keep me laughing for many, many years.
oh, yes - and we named one of our chickens after one of our favourite characters in the show.

Day 02 — Your favorite movie

2011-01-02T20:35:00.000Z

i remembered seeing this heading over at .Square Mug., (where my sister-in-bloggery and co-drabbler Liz is doing the challenge with me), and i've been thinking about it since i read her long, long list. have to amit, films aren't a huge part of my life. i enjoy them very much though, and have often been known to sob like a broken-hearted maiden, or laugh like a drain at the most throwaway stuff. it took me a while, therefore, to actually remember that there are several that fill me with a quiet (and sometimes not-so-quiet) joy, and chief among these is MirrorMask. written by my hero, Saint Neil of the Gaiman (well of course it was! c'mon - did you expect anything else...? if so, you haven't been paying attention. it's kinda his fault that i'm here, after all. if you want to know why, go have a look here), and designed by his artist pal of the stunningly beautiful weirdness, Dave McKean. it's a beautiful, sadly overlooked tale of magic and monkeybirds (all called Bob), and a dark queen, and the desire to run away from the circus and be normal, and sphinxes, and a Really Useful Book with sticky pages, and cowardice, and bravery, and a flying house, and orbiting giants and... and... well - it's a joy of invention and a feast for the eyes and heart.

yup - hands down, it's my favourite.

and i HAVE to watch it again, really, really soon. it's been far too long.

can't at the moment, though, as hubby has a new computer game, and i won't have control of the telly for... well... probably a few days, actually...

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30 day blog challenge: day 01 — Your favorite song

2011-01-01T13:27:00.000Z

so here we are. 2011 at last. happy new year everybody! *fireworks &c*

no really - i hope your 2011 is everything you dream it could be (though not the nightmares, obviously - that would just be mean). i'm not really a celebrater of new year - haven't been for years, but it is kinda nice to see the calendar flick over and feel like you've got a chance to start afresh (however arbitrary the timing of that chance may be. remember, kids - time and date are an invention of man... ;) we had a lovely evening with a couple of friends, last night (The Most Wonderful Woman In The World and her lovely man). they came over for dinner, and then left to get home before midnight, as the fireworks frighten their dogs. so it was just me an' hubby watching Jools Holland's Hootenanny (a tradition a decade long), and it was quiet and lovely.

and now, as i said, here we are. new year, new decade, new challenge. a thirty-day blog challenge, to be precise. and today's is a really, really easy one for me. in fact, i've even mentioned my favourite song somewhere on here. hell - i named the blog after it! but for those of you who may have missed the post, here's a link to it on YouTube. the first time i heard it, it made me cry. well over fifteen years later, i still sit here, cheeks wet with tears, marvelling at how every single word in the lyric both calls to and describes me. though i am neither a musician nor a music geek, music is viscerally important to me, and this song touches my soul every. single. time.

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challenge: a droubble of forgotten words

2010-12-29T11:58:00.000Z

oh, boy- this is fun! further droubble challenge from Liz (see previous posts here and here for explanations of drabbles and droubbles respectively, if you missed it) this time, even more source words. the list is mine. i gave her the first part, and then she asked for some more so, evil cow that i am, i trotted on over to http://www.savethewords.org/ (where you can adopt sadly neglected words and love them and use them and save them from extinction) and picked a few of the little darlings at random.

thing is, i forgot to write down what they mean, so when i came back online a couple of days later, it was to find that Liz had had a bit of a problem with some of the definitions. even the all-powerful Google couldn't find some of them. despite counting this as a sort of obscure victory over The Man (albeit a hollow one, since this means that some of those words are even more forgotten than i realized), i thought i'd better send a few explanations. first, though, i had to go find them again on the website. (if you go have a look, you'll see why this caused one or two problems for me). eventually, i did find the original words and their meanings. and so, without further ado, here is the list, and the ensuing droubble (i've included unusual word definitions at the end):

orca / furtive / seminal / lozenge / treetop / hasten / gleimous / tortiloquy / adimpleate / nidifice / ducenarious / aquabib

The furtive sucking on a lozenge did nothing to reduce his gleimous state. His head felt the size of an orca, and he stared gloomily at the ducenarious used tissues he'd managed to adimpleate with his bodily secretions over the past few days. In his semi- catatonic state, he'd been reduced to dozing in front of the television, floating in and out of consciousness whilst "Parliament Today" droned on before him. From his nidifice on the sofa, he'd observed some seminal tortiloquy and had been impressed, until he realised that this was what politicians did all day, every day.
The worst thing about all of this was not the aching joints, the phlegm, or the lack of energy. It was the fact that he'd been turned into an aquabib during the holiday drinking season. The abstinence was killing him. He wanted to be singing raucousy in the streets, or swinging from a frozen city-centre treetop. Instead, he was confined to the house, whilst his mates sent him texts and pictures of all the fun they were having. Grimacing, he drank more orange juice in an attempt to hasten his recovery so he could go and raise hell at New Year.

gleimous (full of phlegm) / tortiloquy (dishonest or immoral speech - talking around stuff) / adimpleate (to fill up) / nidifice (a nest) / ducenarious (pertaining to two hundred) / aquabib (water-drinker)

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christmas and drabbles and droubbles

2010-12-27T23:47:00.003Z

so christmas is over. all of the rushing around is done, the presents have been given and received, too much food has been consumed, and life is beginning to show signs of returning to normal.
thank the gods for that!
it was a quiet day in the end - just me and hubby at my aunty's, along with my parents and great uncle. it was slow and lovely. as was the food. *happy sigh*

the following two days (today and yesterday) have been somewhat more trying though.
i have three grown-up stepchildren (aged from 17 to 21). eldest stepson and partner have an eight-month-old. they all have very long legs. and there is only seating for five adults in our front room. given that the main activity when they come round tends to be computer games, and we have one less seat than we need, i have spent most of the last two days in the kitchen, wandering around on the internet, and doing little of use. i tried to edit Cirque Du Seul, but the kitchen chairs are not the most cofortable in the world, and i just couldn't get into it.

tonight, they left, and the peace is bliss. i think Literary Kitteh was happy to see them go, too. the minute the front door shut behind them, he was happily curled up on the settee, snoozing as only a kitteh can. and i have been writing a little.

anyone who saw the last couple of posts will perhaps have seen comments and some excellent drabbles from Liz. this evening, she asked me for some different source words so, with an evil laugh, i gave her "ennui", "squamous", and "shriven". she then announced that she was upping the word limit to 250.
now ok - i'll admit that this bothered me a little. in art, conventions and rules can be bent and broken with gay abandon by whosoever should wish to do so - that's one of the glorious things about it. sometimes it produces genius, sometimes a big steaming pile of... well, never mind. you get the idea, i'm sure. but personally? i rather like artistic conventions. i find they give me structure and purpose when i would otherwise be flailing around and in steaming territory. clear parameters are something i find i need more than i would have thought possible. still in the playpen, you see.

anyway, i went and had a dip in wikipedia, and found that the definition of a drabble has become somewhat more loose than i initially thought. however, i still rather like the pushing and wriggling of trying to fit into the 100 word constraint. it's an interesting challenge. but there is, apparently, such a thing as a "droubble" or a double drabble (see the end of the article). exactly 200 words. so i put this to Liz, and she agreed. she suggested, though, that since this is double the word limit, we should have double the source words. fine by me. i'd actually already started writing my droubble by this point, but that's fine - it's a further challenge to see if i can crowbar the words into what i had in mind. but she has not, as yet, got back to me with those three extra source words, so i have finished the one i was writing, and await the arrival of the new words. when they arrive, i may, indeed, try and crowbar them in, or i may just (which is also more likely) write a whole new one. here's the droubble wot i wrote, anyway - along with a couple of drabbles that also happened this evening:

droubble

ennui/squamous/shriven

He had done everything. He had swum with dolphins, playing with them in the crystalline waters of the Caribbean. He had jumped from a high bridge attached to a piece of elastic cord. He had witnessed a sunrise from space, and a sunset from the top of a mountain. He had travelled through deserts and jungles and cities and tundra, drinking in all that was on offer from the landscape around him.
And then ennui had set in. Surely his odyssey had shown him all that this shrunken planet had to offer. After all, he had flown the length and breadth of the planet more times than he could count. What could there be that he had not already seen? He returned to his vast mansion set in its endless acres and gloomily flipped through his electronic photo library, looking for details that he may have missed. And then it hit him. Staring at an accidental picture of his shoe, his squamous eyes opened, and he felt shriven of the soul- weariness plaguing him. Rushing to his vast wardrobe, he grabbed the first pair of walking boots he could find, and set off into the world.
This time, on foot.

drabbles

effortless / doubt / propensity

She envied others' art. The seemingly effortless melding of incidents and accidents that produced things of great terror and beauty filled her with longing. The propensity to doubt her own abilities led her to dismiss those who told her she had talent, and to seek darker avenues to improve her own art.
Trading with demons in dark alleys, she swapped a piece of her soul for each new ability. At last, she had what she thought she needed. Exhibiting her works to the world, she proudly waited for reviews to flood in. A tide of comments containing one word:
"Soulless."

dissolve / books / revolution
The revolution had come and gone. It left in its wake a vague feeling of "Meet the new boss - same as the old boss". And one other difference. There were no more books. The glorious republic had decided that books were antiquated, had outlived their time. But no matter. There was all the new technology that still allowed storytelling without all of that cumbersome paper getting in the way. Now there was only the sharp clarity of electrical impulses speaking to each other. But without the feel, sight and smell of books, the culture began slowly, imperceptibly, to dissolve.

still waiting for those words, Liz... ;o)

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(edit - added after comments posted)

so as you can see in the comments, i got my three extra words, and made this:

ennui/squamous/shriven/sniffle/evocative/muse

The ennui had passed.
The slithering, squamous creatures that haunted his dreams had ceased their vile hissing whispers. He'd laboured in darkness for seeming aeons, hacking and scratching with rusty pen and clotted ink at damp, spongy paper. Not an evocative word in sight. The moist chill in the air making him sniffle interminably, he'd pushed his way through the thorny vines of writer's block, wondering if his torment would ever end. He knew he'd brought it on himself. By allowing himself to become distracted by the worst dregs of popular culture, he'd alienated his sensitive and capricious muse, and she'd left. Her punishment was harsh. Unrelenting. He'd toiled for weeks on end to make amends - eschewing television, newspaper, magazine and radio, just to create sufficient space for her. He decorated the space with strange blooms, sumptuous fabrics, elegant sweetmeats and champagne. He carried it in his head as he hacked through the stinking, half-rotted vegetation of z-list celebrity and tabloid journalism, cradling it carefully and keeping it inviolate.
Eventually, a ray of golden inspiration hit him full in the face and, as he felt her pour into the space he'd so carefully created, he knew he was shriven.

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to challenge, or...oooh! shiny thing!

2010-12-22T22:41:00.000Z

soooo... whilst fighting the cat for posession of my lap and trying to prevent him from treading all over the keyboard, i was perusing the blog of the lady who has been Drabbling so marvellously all over the comments of my previous post (hi Liz! *waves*). I saw that she was doing a thirty day blog challenge. (...uh... what happened to that, BTW - xmas get in the way...? *sympathy*), and I thought it might be a somewhat interesting exercise. i mean - i know hardly anybody ever reads this poor wittering, but perhaps i'll learn something about myself...? maybe. anyway - it's a leeeetle late in the month to start it now. 22 days of posting all at once is a bit of a tall order. and would probably be information overload., anyway. so perhaps i'll have a stab at it in january, when the times are cold and bleak and post-christmassy boring. and try and lick NaNo 2010 into shape at the same time. or maybe, as usually happens, i'll be distracted by a shiny thing and fail.

we'll see. here are the questions, anyway...

Day 01 — Your favorite song

Day 02 — Your favorite movie

Day 03 — Your favorite television program

Day 04 — Your favorite book

Day 05 — Your favorite quote

Day 06 — Whatever tickles your fancy

Day 07 — A photo that makes you happy

Day 08 — A photo that makes you angry/sad

Day 09 — A photo you took

Day 10 — A photo of you taken over ten years ago

Day 11 — A photo of you taken recently

Day 12 — Whatever tickles your fancy

Day 13 — A fictional book

Day 14 — A non-fictional book

Day 15 — A fanfic

Day 16 — A song that makes you cry (or nearly)

Day 17 — An art piece (painting, drawing, sculpture, etc.)

Day 18 — Whatever tickles your fancy

Day 19 — A talent of yours

Day 20 — A hobby of yours

Day 21 — A recipe

Day 22 — A website

Day 23 — A YouTube video

Day 24 — Whatever tickles your fancy

Day 25 — Your day, in great detail

Day 26 — Your week, in great detail

Day 27 — This month, in great detail

Day 28 — This year, in great detail

Day 29 — Hopes, dreams and plans for the next 365 days

Day 30 — Whatever tickles your fancy

so, whaddya reckon? should i do it? do you care what Squeaky's favourite book / film / whatever is? come to think of it, does Squeaky even care...?

answers in the comments...

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christmas and flash and drabbles.

2010-12-19T17:36:00.002Z

well... it seems quite some time since i last blogged... i suppose it is, since the last time i did, it was to crow about being a NaNoWriMo winner again... nothing much has happened, since, anyway.
Max The Literary Kitteh continues to be utterly, utterly gorgeous and adorable (apart from his breath... eugh! :oP he needs his teeth cleaning, i think...) and to sit all over me and purr thunderously whenever i'm on the pooter. or even just sat down, actually. i'm better padded than hubby, you see... also, i have a fondness for hot water bottles which he, being a cat, shares completely. as we do the hot water bottles.

so... like i said, not a lot's been going on. apart from Christmas preperations, of course. i have been unbelievably crap this year. so many people are getting money or amazon vouchers, i'm just anticipating how many times i'll be repeating:

"No, we* weren't sure what to get you and we thought rather than get you something you might not need or like here's and essentially boring and unimagintive christmas present that just shows how utterly crap i am at this sort of thing apart from the odd genius flash of inspiration that happens about once every two ears and unfortunately that didn't happen for anyone this year...."
*(n.b for "we" in this contex, read "me" - hubby doesn't really do the getting of presents in our house - no pressure at all... :-/)

would anyone care to open a sweepstake on it...?

hmph. bah bloody humbug. oh, well - at least we'll get to see friends we don't see nearly often enough.

although, to be fair to myself, i *did* in fact manage to aquire, wrap and post presents for my brother, sister-in-law and niece in astonishingly good time this year. was actually quite proud of this achievement (despite the fact that the parcel also contained sis-in-law's birthday present which should have reached her by the 5th of november... *facepalm*) and continuing the theme of being fair to myself, there were, in fact, lot of things that we (I) thought of that would make perfect presents. but not being a Rothschild heiress or willing to go deeply into debt, i set a £20 limit on each person's gift. i do not wish to start 2011 in hock, TVM...

in other (though related) news, last thursday evening, i was home alone for the one night a year that hubby sleeps elsewhere. it was his christmas do at work and the tradition is that the boss takes everyone out for a meal, and then gets them all rat-arsed. he hires rooms for those who do not live within walking distance, and they all get about four hours sleep and raging hangovers to go to work on the following day. since he works about 20 miles away, hubby is one of those put up in a B&B for the night. so it was just me and teh kitteh. having watched BBC4's adaptation of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams (excellent, by the way - genius casting of Stephen Mangan as Dirk), at about 10:30, i got the urge to write a bit of flash fiction. but having absolutely no idea of what to write, i turned to Twitter for a bit of inspiration. asking for some random words, @eroticnotebook and @cha0tic obliged me very nicely (thanks, chaps!! :o) here are the results, with the words that inspired them:

Stripes gloss tangle (via @eroticnotebook)

Is it the gloss of her oh-so-kissable lips? The sun-born stripes in her artful tangle of hair? Or is it the sparkle in her eyes behind those cute black-framed glasses? Haven't a clue. Nor do I know when it was I first looked at her and knew I had a crush. But I do.
Every day, I see her. She walks the halls looking so fey, as if she'd just stepped out of Tir-Na-Nog for a delighted wander through the heaviness of the mortal world The clothes she wears are of the fashion, but on her they somehow become... other. Nothing really floats, nothing is really rich, or diaphanous, or... or... well, anything, really. But - and yes, I know it's a cliché - somehow, the way she wears them... it makes me sigh. She inhabits the space around her as if the world was perfectly formed to fit her, and she moves through it on the lightest of feet encased in the most damnably sensible and masculine shoes I ever saw on such a creature of faerie. She sits in a throne and lights the people around her to a soft, golden glow. We've barely ever spoken but, even from a distance, she makes the day a somehow softer and more artistic space in time.
~ fin ~

Brick, Bandage, Pins, Backstage Pass, Pipe, Lighter fuel, Charger, Strobe, Watch (via @cha0tic)

The brick walls seep moisture. It's dank in here. It smells of clothes that have been left in the washing machine for a week, at the height of summer. A lone, miserable backstage pass lies in a corner, abandoned; still tangled in the lanyard that, in more energetic times, proudly displayed it around some young and fiery guitarist's neck. No energy left, now. Only lethargic inertia and decay. Congealed dust decorates every surface, clumping into weird shapes that tell the future more surely than any entrailed augury. They spell out the message, "The end is nigh." Rusted pins hold fragments of rotted paper to the oozing baize surface of a once-busy noticeboard. Random objects lie forgotten on odd surfaces. A smashed watch. A strobe that stopped working on the same long-distant night the club closed for the last time. An upended and useless tin of lighter fuel. A small plastic soldier, mounted on a white charger with only three legs. A length of bandage displaying brown smears on its wrinkled and greying surface.
The dripping of a cracked pipe on the sodden and sucking carpet is silenced forever as the wrecking ball obliterates the ghosts of glory days long gone.
~ fin ~

i was quite pleased that the results were at least readable. i tweeted them (with apologies for how depressing the second one was), and got some generous replies from some very nice people (if you're reading this, thank you all!). also an injunction never to apologise for having created something. which was lovely, and made me smile.

i enjoyed the exercise so much that, last night, i decided i'd like to repeat it. i asked for more words, and was deluged by my Twitterfriends. here's what they gave me this time:

oblige /dedication / label /sliced /sticky / marmalade and orange jam / herring / candle snuffers / Aliona Vilani's arse / stationary / propensity /constipation / germination / soft / effortless / heartache / dissolve / revolution /epiphany / revelation / exile / flood / depression / inquisition / debut / doubt / reason / tamales / books

all of these from @skypethis_24601, @DangerousSweets, @EbonyHampl, @thextraman, @TehAntiBubble, @DylynnDeSaint and @monkeystreehous. an embarrassment of riches! i decided i'd write some drabbles (for those who don't know, a drabble is a sort fiction of exactly 100 words - no easy task, but a delightful if, at times, frustrting thing to write). i took all of the words and mixed them up as best i could, producing several groups of three (getting hubby to provide one more to make it all even - he gave me "honey"), and proceeded to drabble. i only managed two last night, viz:

Label / sticky / marmalade
She never watched the show as a kid but, somehow, one episode stuck in her memory. The end of the world was coming, and there were these funny little creatures on a quest to save it. There was no rushing around, no panic - just a quiet dignity, and determination to get things done that stuck in her head; along with the sinister orange glow of a sun too large, old and swollen to care. She looked down, to where her ravaged fingernails picked at the label on a jar of marmalade. Outside, the sky was the same heavy, sticky colour.

and

germination / depression / herring
A depression in the soil may cradle a seed. The rain may fall, and the sun may shine. These, and countless other factors may, in time, lead to the germination of that seed, along with thousands of its siblings.
Likewise, a depression in life may cradle a seed, an idea. Into this life, the rain may fall, the sun may shine, and myriad other circumstances may lead to sprouting, flowering, the bearing of fruit. The cliché of the suffering artist is not so very far from the nature of the physical world. Or it could all be a red herring...

i'm looking forward to sinking my teeth into the rest, though, the next time i fancy a delicious writerly snack. :o)

here are the other trios i made - why don't you have a go yourself and send me the results?

effortless / doubt / propensity
dissolve / books / revolution
epiphany / sliced / inquisition
exile / constipation / dedication
reason / debut / tamales
candle snuffers / stationary / heartache
oblige / revelation / flood
soft / arse / honey

.

added edit: this post did have a tag for the "general uselessness of me", but i was ordered to remove it by the delightful @TehAntiBubble - and you do not mess with Teh Bubbles. ma'am, yes ma'am! *salutes* XXX

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NaNoWriMo again

2010-12-01T09:26:00.000Z

so there you have it. thirty days of slog, and here i am. the proud author of my THIRD NOVEL!!!
i can hardly believe it, but i've done it again, and i'm a winner again! :D

and this year, i think i might actually have written something vaguely worth reading, after last year's debacle. although to be fair, i haven't read it back yet, so time will, inevitably, tell. but i have hopes. not high ones, to be sure, as i'm quite aware it needs a damn good editorial kick in the arse to make it readable. i'm also aware that since i didn't actually know who the murderer was until about the 23rd day (and this is one of the reasons that i love NaNoWriMo), there's a lot that needs tweaking to take into account foreshadowing, and certain characters' attitudes to certain things, but that's where the rolling-in-chocolate-sauce glory of editing comes in. *happy sigh*

speaking of, since it's my first snowday since i was about twelve years old (YIPPEEE!!!!) and we have about a foot of snow outside our front door, i think i might plunge into that right about now (the editing, that is, not the snow....brrrrr!!!). but i'll leave you with the synopsis of my third novel (god, that phrase *never* gets old!!! :o):

Cirque Du Seul

It's almost time for the winter season at the Roundhouse Circus, and the performers are rehearsing hard. When Seb, one of the trapeze artists has an accident and ends up in a coma, people are shocked, but they get on with their lives. The show must go on, after all. But it soon emerges that this was no accident - someone has tampered with the trapeze. It's not common knowledge, however. The incident could shut the circus down for weeks, and be a disaster for the livelihoods of many, many people. So Shona, a costumier, and Bill, a morose and misanthropic clown, set out to work out who could have wished Seb ill. And when opening night finally comes around, it becomes evident that it's not just Seb that the would-be murderer wants dead.

NaNoWriMo

2010-10-30T23:03:00.001+01:00

Twenty five hours to go. And I have no plot, no characters, no setting, no idea. Fuck yeah! Bring it on, NaNoWriMo!!! :D
P.S. Wish me luck, dear reader, i'm gonna need it... ;)
XXX
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three stories and an introduction.

2010-10-24T22:58:00.000+01:00

once upon a time, there was a little boy who lived with his grandparents.
one day, when he was playing outside, he met a stray cat. he played with this cat, and they liked each other very much. when the boy was called in for his tea, he excitedly told his grandparents about this lovely little black and white cat he'd met, and how she had no home to go to and pleasepleaseplease could he keep her?
his grandad considered this, looking at his grandson's hopeful face and said: "all right - if you can go outside and find this cat, you can keep it."
the boy was thrilled, and rushed outside to find the little black and white cat. he searched and he searched, high and low, but he couldn't find the little cat anywhere. eventually, it got dark, and his grandma called him inside. he walked inside slowly, his shoulders drooping with dejection. he met his grandad in the living room.
"did you find the cat, then?"
the boy's shoulders sagged a little more. "no, i didn't"
"well never mind" replied his grandad, kindly. "go on upstairs and get ready for bed, lad"
the boy walked slowly and sadly into the hall, to the foot of the stairs.
where the little black and white cat was waiting for him.
it was only many years later, when he was telling his future wife the story of the little black and white cat, that he realised how the cat had got to the foot of those stairs.

---

once upon a time, there was a little girl who already had two cats.
it was a very bad winter. it was very cold, and the snow lay thick on the ground. she began to hear her mum and dad talking about "that bloody black thing" that, she gathered, was another cat that had taken to sneaking in through the cat flap at night, and sleeping on the kitchen table with the other two cats. her dad kept throwing his slipper at it, but "that bloody black thing" was very persistent and, eventually, the family gave in and adopted the cat.
she was, actually, a beautiful longhaired tortoishell, and turned out to have the sweetest, most loving nature of any cat the little girl had ever, or (she suspects) would ever, encounter. it was easy to tell when the cat was asleep, since that was the only time she ever stopped purring.
the little girl grew up with that cat, and they were very, very firm friends.
when the little girl was twenty, the beautiful cat died, and she was heartbroken. a dozen years later, she still missed her and, very occasionally, dreamed about her. when this happened, she would wake up crying, missing her friend terribly, wishing only to bury her face into that soft, sweet-smelling fur, and hear that thunderous, throbbing purr once more.

---

once upon a time, the little boy with the black and white cat grew up to have a son. one day, whilst the (now) man and his (now) wife were visiting the son, his girlfriend and their son, in their new house, the man and his wife went outside for a smoke (so they wouldn't damage the health of the man's grandson). whilst they were outside (along with the man's son and his other son, who was staying with his brother and family for a while), a big black and white cat jumped up on to the fence beside them and, with thunderous purrs and imperious and insistent headbutts, demanded as much fuss as they were prepared to give him. delighted with this amazingly sweet natured animal, the man and his wife questioned the young men about this cat. they were horrified to learn that the previous tennants had left the cat behind when they moved, and he was living in the garden of the abandoned house next door. the brothers had been feeding him, but that was as far as it went, as they were all on a very low income, and couldn't afford to do any more than that. and besides, living outside, the poor animal, of course, had fleas, and they didn't want the fleas in the house (especially with the baby) if they could help it, and couldn't afford to treat them properly.
the man and his wife's hearts melted.
they were on holiday that week, and were going away. they decided, however, that as soon as they returned, they would adopt this sweet and abandoned animal, and give him the loving home that he deserved.

---

ladies and gentlemen, i take great pleasure in introducing you to Max The Cat.

i never thought i would ever again meet a cat as sweet-natured and chilled out as my beloved and much-missed tortoishell.

but i think he comes pretty close.

this is the view i've had for much of the weekend, at least when i've sat still for more than five minutes, since he comes and lies contentedly on my chest:

accompanied with affectionate headbutts to the chin, and a purr like the throb of an engine.

i think i'm in love.

freezing to death in Norfolk, with added fungus.

2010-10-24T21:56:00.000+01:00

....well...not all the time...

from monday to friday this week, we've been on our annual it's-october-and-we've-got-a-week-off-let's-go-park-up-somewhere-beautiful-for-a-few-days jaunt. this year, it was Thetford Forest in Norfolk. it's been a favourite campervan haunt of ours since a friend mentioned it a few years ago. we've been two or three times, now, though not for about three years, for various reasons. and it was as quiet and peaceful as we remembered it. it's managed by the forestry commission, and is basically a vast triangular tree farm, consisting of mainly pine, but with a few pockets of deciduous planting here and there. as i said, we love it. it's so vast that despite the public access to the many many rides and dirt tracks and pathways that crisscross it, you often get the impression that you've got the whole place to yourself (well - you and the wildlife, that is...)

as usual, i took lots of pics and, amateurish though they are, i think they might give a better impression of why we love the place than i could with twenty-six letters and a handful of punctuation. therefore, a photostory of our holiday folows:

we arrived about four-ish, and parked up in our favourite spot under the trees, almost in the centre of the forest. in case you're wondering, Talulah isn't an all-terrain vehicle, there's a dirt road that leads right through the heart of the forest. the potholes in said road, however, had me gritting my teeth and screwing my eyes shut waiting for the crunch of a grounding. thankfully, hubby managed to avoid the deepest ones.

off we went for a walk down the beech avenue in the fading light...

curses!

as often happens here, we ended up stumbling back in the dark, not entirely sure of the precise path to follow, but we made it back eventually. a little later, when we were snuggled up in bed listening to the radio, the moon came up, and shone through the skylights...

the next day, we set off again into the forest, but this time, with a purpose. a friend had loaned us a fantastic book on foraging for and identifying edible mushrooms, and both being mushroom lovers, we just couldn't resist.

however, something had got there before us...

but! we proudly identified and gathered a hatful of common yellow rusula mushrooms

it being October, of course the forest was full of fungus, some of it very beautiful.

i have absolutely no idea what this one is, but it was soooo pretty!

so, on return to Talulah, we had, ta-DAAAAAH!!!!

mushrooms on toast, what we had picked our veryownselves! (*whisper* if i'm honest, they were a little bland, but salt and pepper helped, and the pride of foraging, identifying and cooking wild food adds a piquancy all of its own) accompanied, for me, at least, by yarrow tea (see top of pic), as i was developing a stinking cold, and yarrow can be very effecacious in knocking it on the head.

accompanied, of course, by a good might's sleep.

camper tip: hats in bed = essential at this time of year - the wind was blowing straight across the North sea from Norway, and it was fecking FREEZING cold!

have to say though, the cold is kinda worth it when you get to wake up to this...

----

the next day, we headed off to a place charmingly named Wells-Next-The-Sea, on the north coast, because even we can get bored walking around a pine forest for five days, and i had very fond memories of the beach, and the deli on the seafront (which, i was sad to learn, no longer sell the delicious blueberry brownies we had the last time we were there :(

the beach, however, was as lovely as i remembered. unfortunately, the Norwegian wind was still blowing hard. the patterns you can see on the sand are, in fact, caused by a mist of fine grains being blown across the surface. the effect of the brilliand sunlight on these streamers of sand was shimmeringly magical, and utterly mesmerising. sadly, not quite enough to distract from the bone-chillingly cold wind, so we escaped into the trees to shelter from it.

a little piece of heaven.

----

it was so cold that night that we almost threw in the towel and buggered off home. however, we decided not to, and were soooo glad that we did.

heading back to Thetford Forest, this is what greeted us:

the wind had died somewhat and, in amongst the trees, it was almost warm. so off we went for another wander.

along the way, we encountered deer,, which we managed to sneak up on admirably (i thought) and photograph.....

.....and this singular construction....

it's not a sunken cabin, but one of several little constructions roofed with black-painted corrugated iron, created as a haven for the local adder population.

and just across the way was this stunning specemin of fungushood:

we instantly recognised it. here's one we found earlier:

these pics were taken the very first time we went there and, as you can see, these things are bloody ginormous!

excitedly, i whipped out the mushroom ID book, and we were thrilled to discover that this was not only a parasol mushroom (of course!), but....it was edible!

we grabbed the prize, and hot-footed it back to Talulah to fry it up in breadcrumbs.

it. was. utterly. UTTERLY. delicious.

and so, with a sense of triumph and euphoria, we headed home the next day for something even more exciting than delicious wild food.

but that's the subject of the next post.........

about as intellectual as i get

2010-09-19T11:09:00.000+01:00

there's been a thought washing around in my head this week, and it's this: i wonder if those ancient greek dudes were really on to something...? believe it or not, this was prompted by my having my lip pierced.

look, in Squeaky's World, this makes perfect sense, i promise.

it was Plato (....um...i think...) who came up with the "Theory of Form", which basically, as far as my limited brain can understand it (following a distant reading of Sophie's World and a quick reference to Wikipedia), states that everything we experience through our senses is an echo of a perfect form that exists on some other plane somewhere. ....or something along those lines...

and i have begun to wonder, in an idle sort of way, if we are not all shadows on the wall.

bear with me on this.

so - at the age of sixteen, the embryonic Squeaky had her nose pierced. and she was so very proud of this. she loooooved her nose piercing. it gave her a little bubble of joy every time she looked into the mirror. it just felt so right - like it was meant to be. and she still loves her pierced nose, seventeen years later. (omg - i had my nose pierced more than half of my life ago! *momentarily feels old*)

then, a couple of years ago, having had blonde hair to her waist for most of he life, she had it all cut off, and dyed it purple. again - bubbles of joy nearly every time she looked into the mirror. like it was meant to be.

a week ago yesterday, she had her lip pierced. and she loves it.

now, the day after she had her lip pierced, she went to see her parents, who live on a boat near Hull, wondering what their response would be. her father, she was sure, would hate it, but that's just Dad. he hated the nose ring, too but, being Dad, said little or nothing about that, since he's so laid back, he's practically horizontal, and tends not to get aerated about things he realises he can do nothing about. her mother, she was not sure about. she had, after all, encouraged and paid for the nose-piercing (and the moment it went in, with Mum looking on proudly, is still a surprisingly vivid memory, by the way).

so she waited for their reaction to her new adornment.

and waited, and waited.

in the end, wondering if they were just being polite in not mentioning it, as they both hated it, she asked what they thought.

they looked mildly surprised when attention was drawn to a new piece of metal in their daughter's face and, individually, their reaction was much he same: "Well, i thought it was new, but i wasn't sure, as it seems like the sort of thing that you'd do, anyway"

....er....ok....

i'm 33. most people, i think, tend to get this sort of thing done when they're in their teens, or early twenties. but maybe that's just my prejudices showing. in western society, putting bits of metal into your face, or any part of your body other than your ears, has always struck me as a mildly rebellious act, since it's not really in our culture.

...um...i would like to stress, at this point, neither the nose or the lip were a consciously rebellious act on my part - more in the nature of decoration (though i must admit that it has been tremendous fun winding up a colleague who thinks that tattos and piercings are a revolting perversion)

anyway - back to the point.

i had very much the same reaction from colleagues. these are people i see every day, in an environment where facial piercings are pretty uncommon, though certainly not villified (except for by the colleague i mentioned earlier). and nobody noticed! not a single one! when it was pointed out, they said they hadn't really noticed, but that they thought it was very "me".

....hang on, a minute...

very "me"? what does that mean? now, i choose to believe that they think it suits me. but more than that, and here's where those ancient greek dudes come in. it almost seems like the nose, and the hair, and the lip, and various other things, were things that were always there in potentia, as it were. that Squeaky, as a person, exists in her whole and complete form somewhere beyond Plato's Cave, and she's coming into focus in the sensual world bit by bit. and that applies to her mind, too. and that's why every time i become aware of that thing that's changed, it feels right. because, somehow, that's how it was meant to be...

or i could, in fact, be talking complete bollocks, as usual. *grin*

***

in other news:

we have a new addition to our family of vehicles.

because the adorable Talulah is such an expensive old girl to run, we have acquired a tiny little Fiesta van, who has been named Little V. (little van - geddit? :D) and she, too, though battered, is adorable! dirt cheap to run and lovely to drive, she's taking the pressure off poor old Talulah, and will save quite a bit of money in running and maintenence costs. and we have found somewhere off the road to park Talulah - so she's not subject to the indignities of passing traffic hurling stones and road shit at her beautiful paintwork.

yesterday, we went climbing, for the first time in months. it wasn't long - just a couple of hours, but it was good! we went indoors, to our local climbing centre, Alter-Rock. it was good to be back. since we were last there (in January!), they have added a large fin in the middle of the area, with loads of new climbs and textures/techniques. as well as a traverse wall. And. It. Rocks! there was soooo much to do, and all very interesting. loads of corners and aretes and overhangs and roofs to tackle. great fun, and i did really well - having not climbed for months, i actually managed a couple of 6A rated climbs! and i even screwed up my courage to lead a 4!!! *pride*

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what i did on my holidays

2010-08-31T18:53:00.000+01:00

...um...well...not a great deal, if i'm honest...

bearing in mind, though, that we haven't been away for a year, not doing much doesn't really matter, as we were too busy just chilling out. of course, the rain didn't help all that much, either... but it was nice and, forthwith, some pictorial representations:

first stop, the Headland Camping and Caravan Park, Tintagel, where the peace and quiet know no bounds. you can just breathe in the tranquility.

that's Talulah at the back of the row - she has her roof up. we hadn't been there ten minutes before the guy on the pitch next to us was taking pictures of his kids giving the VeeDub wave and saying "Duuuuude!" in their really tiny little voices. sooooo cute!

then we headed off down the coast path and around the headland to Tintagel Haven. it's one of my favourite places in the whole world - i would sit and watch the sea there for hours if i could get away with it...

as you can see, the tide was in. the large cave in the centre of the picture is called Merlin's Cave (natch!). when the tide is out, you can scramble over the slippery rocks in there and come right out on the other side of the headland. this is the place hubby taught me to skim stones when we first came here about 12 years ago. i'm pretty good at it, if i say so myself, and still ridiculously proud of being able to... *grin*

when hubby finally managed to drag me away from the border between earth and sea, we toddled off up to the cafe on the headland to have those cornwall essentials: a pastie (for him) and a cream tea (for me). oooh - heaven on a plate! :D

Talulah's bed, by the way, is totally awesome!

behind me you can see Mango The Rat's cage. yup - she comes too!

later that evening, we discovered that we had a stowaway...

this handsome fellow is Spot The Spider. a well-travelled fellow indeed, we found him in all sorts of unlikely places around Talulah, and he stayed with us for a day or two. however, one night, he mysteriously disappeared, and hubby woke up feeling suspiciously fuller than he had when he went to sleep...

it also rained fairly hard that night. as you can see - Squeaky is a genius when it comes to sorting out a leaky skylight...

the following day was beautiful, if extremely windy. the pixie hat became my constant companion on this holiday - i rarely took it off, hence spent most of the holiday looking somewhat silly. but then - there's really nothing new about that.

next stop: St Ives.

and the sun shone for our arrival.

(that sign we're making with our hands, BTW, is the VeeDub wave i mentioned earlier)

however, the following day...

it pissed it down. ALL DAY!!! D:

at times like these, you make your own entertainment. what we made was pouches for the magnets to hold Talulah's curtains up (which i'm still sewing on, BTW. a minimum of six on each curtain. four curtains done, eight to go...*groan*). it was a really lovely way to spend a rainy afternoon, and the time flew.

the following day, it had, thankfully, ceased to rain like the end of the world was nigh. Talulah is lovely to spend time in but really, even i was getting cabin fever by the end of the day!

so we took advantage of the break in the weather and hotfooted it along the coast path to St Ives.

...just...

...gorgeous!

there were many lovely things to be had in this ancient fishing village / haven for artists, the deli we found was quite heavenly (homemade brownies and gingerbread, delicious goats cheese, and charcoal biscuits - all organic and totally nommy!), but the little details of the town (which i believe is getting on for 700 years old) are utterly delightful.

seriously - how many places could this door lead to? on this plane or any other?

this one delighted me beyond measure, being such a tea-obsessed slurper. really, they ought to rename it Squeaky Street. or possibly Teabelly Alley (a personal favourite)

*snigger* no comment. none whatsoever. no cheap jokes, either. ;)

following our days in St Ives it was, sadly, time to start making our way homewards. but Talulah is an old girl, and needs to take her time when she's ambling around the country. so we had to pick a place to stop for the night on our way home. hubby, genius at picking new places to go that he is, picked a tiny little end-of-the-road place called Brean, on the Somerset coast - right at the edge of the levels. the geography and scenery around there is awesome, but i don't think you can really appreciate its stunning beauty until you get yourself up high, and can see the whole world spread out beneath you. we only discovered this when we climbed up Brean Down - a great chunk of turf-covered rock that thrusts up and into the sea between Brean and Weston-Super-Mare.

look! there's Talulah on the beach! :D

the vast expanse of sand was utterly breathtaking, and the land is just as flat for miles around, glowing with a million shades of green.

and the sun shone all day.

Inception

2010-08-10T23:42:00.001+01:00

Just come back from the cinema. This film surprised me. Seeing the trailer, i expected it to be blow-your-hair-back spectacular and, well, yes - the SFX were, of course, excellent. But pretty much of a muchness with so many other big budget spectacular movies. Can't actually say they were anything other than a bit Meh, to be honest, though the freefall scenes were very well executed, and pretty impressive. The thing that most caught my attention was the story, and the concept behind it. The fact that there actually *was* a story, and a good one at that, was a very nice surprise, i admit. And so beautifully constructed, too. Simple, yet very complex. And the concept was always guaranteed to get my attention, having spent so many hours as a child pondering the differences between dreams and reality, and how one could really, *really* tell one from the other. And if that telling would be right. So glad it really *isn't* just me. And the guy who played Eames? Hot damn! *thud*

camper porn and other news

2010-08-09T22:33:00.000+01:00

so the last time i blogged, i believe i mentioned something about a bit of a catch-up. really, it's just that there are one or two minor things i meant to blog about and just never got round to it. what can i say? i'm like good pastry - flaky. however, i'll start with things uppermost and see where i go from there...

continuing the love affair with Talulah. *sigh*

something we never thought about before we bought Taulah, something that never even crossed our minds, is that VeeDubs are rather special creatures. yes, they are beautiful design classics, and iconic in their own way. yes, they are veeeeery fasionable (as, of course, they damn well should be - there are, after all, some people left in the world who have taste and discernment... ;). and yes they are, of course, camper vans.
and that's what we thought we were buying: a camper van. a very pretty and well looked-after camper van, but a camper van, nontheless. and, of course, we did.

however, stealing over us a little more every day since we bought her has been A Realisation.

Talulah is a Classic Vehicle. one of those things you see at shows and on driveways, being polished to within an inch of their mechanical life. and now, we've got one. by default, yes, but we have one.

now we have to look after her.

oh, gods - we have to put fuel in her!

something we never thought to check is the rate at which these things drink fuel. oh, my - Talulah is a thirsty girl! she did 22 miles per gallon.... when she was brand spanking new!!!

ohmyjesusgod!

so the plan was to use her in much the same way we used Isobel. *cough* kinda not really practical. notwithstanding the cost in fuel and maintenance (hubby drives 40 miles a day on a filthydirty road that's caked in salt in the wintertime - EEK!), we don't want to wear out her poor engine.

Enter Plan B (no - not the band - do keep up)

there is a very nice old lady a few doors down from us that was my beloved and much missed Nana's best friend for over 50 years. she's agreed to rent us some space on her driveway. we are also buying a runaround from some good friends. this little thing is about as generic as you could get as far as cars are concerned (therefore extremely cheap and easy to maintain) and, moreover, does about 60 to the gallon.

result!

so when the weather gets shitty, we will tuck Talulah up on her lovely cozy Tarmac (with a cover, natch), and use her only on weekends - to keep her ticking over. and now, despite the fact that the vehicles in this family will soon outnumber the humans by a factor of 1.5 : 1, i don't feel the sliiiightest bit guilty about that. no siree bob, i do not. because sitting on that driveway a few doors down is all of our holidays for at least the next three years. hopefully much, much longer. and she is a work of art.

ok, i'm done now. i promise i will try veryvery hard to not post any more pics of our baby.

---------

and so - in other news or, as it's more accurately known....

Random Stuff. *checks pic folders for Stuff I Have Done Recently*

several weeks ago, we went on a work outing to Stratford-Upon-Avon because... well, frankly, it was a cheap day out, and we thought it would be interesting to go there and see how well we could avoid Shakespeare. we did pretty well, actually, we did Pub, Shoe Shopping, and....

Making New Friends.

Hippy Hubby talkin' to teh animals

Squeaky and friend (look at the butterfly - not the face! aaargh!!! *hides*)

The Art Of Disguise

seriously - how cool is this little dude?!

t'was quite a jolly day. didn't do much, but it was relaxing.

---------

even more weeks ago, on a miserable, drizzly saturday, we went to Derby musem. haven't been there since my grandad used to take us as kids, 25 years ago. ever wondered what 25 years' wrth of dust looks like...? nope, me neither. i found out, though, as some of the exhibitions really were the same ones i used to look at as a kid. there was some stuff in there that i was dreadfully bored by as a kid that was fascinating now, but that's to be expected, right? oddly, though, and slightly worryingly, the most fascinating object in the entire place was part of an exhibition of stuff that was found in an old chemist shop before it was demolished recently. viz, this:

i have a low pain threshold, and i hate having injections, but for reasons i have not examined too closely, i found this absolutely fascinating, and very beautiful. i actually spent a good ten minutes with my nose pressed up against the glass, trying to imagine what something this delicate would feel like, sliding into my flesh...

---------

lastly (i'll tell you about the curtains and the slightly haunted sewing machine another time...) there is a new addition to our interior decor. finally, finally, i have bookshelves of my very own. my wonderful and clever hubby made them for me, and i cannot express how happy it makes me. seriously - i actually cried when i saw them all finished and mine all mine.

*happy sigh*

homecoming

2010-08-02T22:18:00.000+01:00

she's here, at last - Talulah hath arrived! :D

look!

gawd, but saturday was a loooong-ass day!

it started at 6am. we had to get the bus to derby, catch a train to st pancras in london, a taxi to fenchurch street station in same, a train to stanford le hope, then richard (the lovely guy who sold Talulah to us) came to pick us up and take us to our new baby.

then we spent a couple of hours alternately cooing over her loveliness, and loading her up for the journey to her new home.

yup, loading her up.

she came with a spare engine. and sundry other spares that are, frankly, almost enough to half-build another camper. result! :)

it took us four hours to drive home. we made it at about 7:30pm. then we had to get everything back out of Talulah, and up the stairs into the spare room. hubby had to carry the engine block up on his own! \'o'/

but she's home, now, and soooooo shiny! (as you can see from the pic).

i would talk about the delightful day we spent at some friends' house yesterday, but the internet and my laptop have been playing silly buggers tonight, and it's nearly bedtime. sometime soon, i'm gonna have to do a long catch-up post.

but not tonight. so i'll leave you with a pic of richard and Talulah. oh, and some strange woman who snuck into the pic and grinned like an idiot. no idea who she is, but we only just managed to patch up the crack in the camera lens...

Waterworks

2010-07-23T17:50:00.003+01:00

Shitty afternoon. Got miserable enough to cry on the bike on the way home. Dropped the bike off at the bike shop to get the rear tyre changed, and walked home through the park. I'm still here, as it happens.
I sat under a tree in the shade, and watched tiny insects dancing in the sunlight, listening to my ipod - possibly my favourite possession, btw. At least I've stopped sobbing for now.
Fucking hormones.

sings "My name is Talulah..."

2010-07-19T21:52:00.000+01:00

squeaky is a bad blogger. *shame*
i haven't blogged for far, far too long, i know. but honestly, there hasn't been much going on. there appears to be something growing out of the silt which is, at present, about 11,000 words long. it's coming very, very slowly. and i keep hitting walls with "OK, smartass, what happens next, then?" scrawled all over them in dripping red paint.
but it's coming. the working title is utterly crap, and there's already a lot that needs poking, but i still have a connection with it, and ideas for what happens later (without any idea of how i'm going to get from here to there), but it's coming.... :)

-

and now, since the end appears to be in sight, the sad and terrible story of Isobel, our poor, abused camper.

Isobel has been with us for about four years. and we love her. she has given us much joy (and occasional frustration - like the first time her sliding door fell off, but never mind that), and has been astonishingly reliable. she's carried hubby to work every day, and he and i all over the country to watch ravens, and wolves (the latter only in a safari park, sadly), and long, long walks in deserted woodlands, and so many other places. she has been a true and faithful friend. but she was getting rusty. so we decided to give her a new set of clothes (i.e. a new paint job), and get a few things repaired and spruced up.
we took her to a local place, which shall remain nameless (insert copious and acidic swearing here), as they were VW refurbishment specialists, and the work they showed us looked pretty good. they quoted us a price we could afford for replacing panels, getting rid of the rust, taking her back to the bare metal and respraying, and we saved hard for several months.
she was to be purple on the outside, and we were going to redo her insides in green.
she went in at the beginning of november, and was supposed to be in there for four weeks.
six weeks later (we didn't mind waiting, these things take time, after all), we finally got her back. it was two days before christmas, and the spanking new purple paint was a fantastic christmas present. we were thrilled! yay! :D

five weeks later, it all went tits up.

rust started showing through the new paint. not just a little patch, either - all over the bloody place! we were horrified!

we took her back and showed the guy who runs the garage, and he gave every appearance of also being horrified at the shoddy work. apparently, the reason it had taken six weeks was that "Dave The Paint" (the sprayer who does all of their paintwork for them) had been having one or two personal problems when he did Isobel's work. really? no shit!
well anyway, we were very understanding - people do have problems, after all - and garage bloke said he'd get it sorted, at no extra cost to us. too bloody right!
so off she went again. i will leave out the description of the shitty fucking deathtrap car he loaned us, or what a nightmare we had getting temporary insurance for it, or any of the myriad other things that happened, each one sinking our spirits lower and lower.
we missed out on our first week's leave this year, and the second.
THREE MONTHS after we took her in for the second time, the work still had not even been started. apparrently, DTP was very angry that we had dared to complain about his dreadful, shoddy work. go figure - we're so ungrateful. *shrug*
we finally demanded that garage guy return Isobel, and the money we'd paid him. the cheeky bastad tried to give us 900 quid less, saying work had been done on the body of the van. hubby, on the verge of tears of anger, frustration and sorrow, pointed out that she was now in a worse state than when she went in. her door locks no longer worked, the speaker cables had been carelessly cut when they removed the doors, all the interior window trims had disappeared, and the rust was even worse, with paint flaking off all over the bloody place.
he returned Isobel and, a couple of weeks later, we finally got all of the money back, but were now faced with the question: "What now?" find somewhere else that would charge us even more and be just as likely to rip us off?
Why bother now?
i can't adequately convey the trauma of this whole story here. she was our pride and joy, and those scumbags had fucking RUINED her. she no longer had that spirit of joy that made us relax as soon as we sat in her. she was, to us, a flat, dead thing. a moving cavern of metal, and nothing more.
we decided the time had come.
we were ready.
"we shall buy a bay window".
one of the ones you see all over the roads of Cornwall in the summer. a proper VW bus. not a splitty (the really old ones with the split windscreen), since they're really, really expensive. but we worked out that we could just about afford a bay window, with a pop top.
so we started searching the interwebz.
there's a place we found down in Oxfordshire. they buy and sell and do up campers, and they do really, really good work, on site (bonus!). but they were a little out of our price range. so we started trawling through the classified ads on vwcampercrazy.com.
we saw a few we liked, and even went to look at one (which was pink! XD), but there was one ad that really caught our eye. however, we couldn't get hold of the guy, and the ad was a couple of weeks old. we thought it might already have gone, since the good ones tend to go really quickly, but a week later, the guy finally got back to us. it was still for sale, and he was happy to keep it for us until we could get to see her.
yesterday, we drove all the way down to essex (three hours!), just to see it, hoping against hope that it wouldn't be a wasted 360 mile round trip.

it wasn't.

we've found her! we've found our new baby!

***HAPPYDANCE***

her name is Talulah, and she's GORGEOUS!!!

look-->

her bodywork is immaculate, without a speck of rust anywhere (apart from a teeny tiny patch on the passanger footwell - easily sorted), and her interior is fantastically well designed, hand built, and, again, immaculate. i should probably mention that the paint job and interior were both done by the lovely guy that's selling her to us, and quite obviously with a great deal of love.

she is a dream!

now we will be on tenterhooks for two weeks until we can pick her up.

WE CAN'T WAIT!!!

and poor, abused Isobel? she's going to a new home, where she will be loved and appreciated. she's going to go and live with The Most Wonderful Woman In The World and her lovely chap. this makes us happy, too.

*smile*

blogfest: advice for new writers

2010-06-18T09:28:00.000+01:00

today, the black dog is prowling. i told Twitter about it, and my tweeps instantly set about cheering me up. or, in one particular case *looks hard at @peevishpenman* bullying me to do something about it. Carrie's suggestion was to join her blogfest.
after a little persuasion, i guess i may have one or two things to add, with the caveat that most of the advice probably comes not from me, but from Saint Neil (better known as Neil Gaiman - thoroughly bigged up in this post on how i became a writer and got my name).

1) write. just write. doesn't matter what. emails, blog posts, poems, short stories, scenes, *anything*. if you haven't been trained, you need the practice. even if you *have* been trained, it'll keep the writing muscles in your brain nice and limber.

2) write about stuff you find interesting. if *you're* not interested, your readers sure as hell won't be.

3) read. lots. sounds obvious, i know, but that's how i learned to write. just by having my nose (literally) in a book from the age of seven or eight.

4) read different stuff to what you'e used to. you may not enjoy a lot of it, and that's fine. but *give it a chance* before you put it down and say "this isn't for me". you may be surprised. also, it will give you clues as to what you in particular probably *shouldn't* be writing. (see #2)

5) ask yourself "what if?" ALL THE TIME. this is how stories are made.

6) most importantly (for me, at any rate) find a support network!!! seriously. Twitter (where i found mine) has more value to me as a writer than i could possibly, possibly express. for advice, opening up new genres, and a vast, limitless supply of support, encouragement and Twitterlove, i woldn't call myself a writer if it wasn't for those little 140 character messages, cheering me on from all over the world.
it gives me the warm fuzzies. ^_^

hey, carrie, whadya know? it seems to be working! *smile*

.

insomnia, storms, little brother and powerless.

2010-06-06T22:06:00.000+01:00

as usual for a weekend, i went to bed quite late last night. well, it was about 1:30 this morning, actually. but i couldn't sleep.

for three reasons.

the first was that it was hot and muggy. about this, i won't complain. it's inconvenient, sure, but this country can be so effing cold and miserable at times, that i refuse to complain when it's hot, as a matter of principle. i love the hot weather, even if it makes me dopey and listless, it's still better than being cold! also, it's the sort of weather that produces one of my favourite things in the whole world. we spent a good half hour last night, dangling our legs out of our bedoom window watching a storm at about seven miles distance. *sigh* it was the first of the year, and utter bliss. it was perfectly still, and the clouds were lighting up in the distance with that unearthly beauty you only get on summer nights.

the second was that i had a new story idea knocking on my brain. this, of course, pleased me. i haven't been writing a lot, lately, as i have other things on my mind, and it's kind of hard to settle to it, but i'm thrilled that i'm still thinking as a writer, even wen i'm not writing. to me, it's another tiny step towards that place i want to be - someone who needs to write. (heh - in writing that, i realised that what i'm doing is attempting to cultivate an addiction. naughty Squeaky! *grin*) i spent a lot of time thinking about this story, and how it might go - disconnected elements i might throw in, and i hope it will be the backbone of this year's NaNoWriMo effort, but we'll have to see. i know little about it, just how it starts and, as i said, one or two random bits that may or may not be in the middle. it sort of stems from the description duel i was involved in at the beginning of the year. i had an idea there might be more to it at the time, but for some reason, it started to put some roots into the story silt last night. but i'm not going to chase it. with me, that doesn't seem to be the way forward. nor planning a story arc or indeed (as i think i've mentioned before) outlining a plot. somehow, it loses the excitement of the writing. it makes me wonder if that's because i started writing with NaNoWriMo - that heady, exciting, headlong rush down the pathways of the story seems to have set itself as the pattern for me. i'm not a thoughtful, introspective type of person. and, if i'm honest, those sort of books don't generally float my boat. what can i say? i'm instinctive, impulsive and exciteable, and very much enjoy that kind of book, too.

which sort of brings me to the third reason that i couldn't sleep. i'd been reading a book that filled my brain with fireworks, both good and bad. i read half of it yesterday, and half of it today. and i urge you, as an internet user, to do the same. the book is called "Little Brother" by a man named Cory Doctorow. it's about how the surveillance culture that we live in can go horribly, horribly wrong. it's about security, and privacy, and (most attractively for me, as i always, *always* wanted to be like this) about a bunch of geeky teenagers who take on the might of The Man. And Kick. His. Ass. it's *really* exciting, and explains some of the arcana of the internet in a way i could just about grasp. and it was fascinating.

truly - geeks are the future.

sadly, i think i'm possibly too old to become any kind of computer/communications geek now, and my mathematical understanding is most assuredly not up to the job. but i have such a huge admiration for geeks of *every* stripe - not just the electronic ones. if there's any sort of justice around, never mind the meek inheriting the earth - i think the geeks should.

speaking of books wot i haz read, i would like to bring your attention to another one whilst (or, rather, *if*) i still have your ear. this one is the first in a YA fantasy series. Powerless Book 1: The Synthesis is written by Jason Letts, also known as @foreverjuly . you may have seen him wandering around on Twitter at odd hours of the day or night (he teaches English in Japan), being alternately philosophical and subversve. he's a lovely guy, and i urge you to get online and buy the book. i spent a short while dropping one or two reviews on amazon.com, smashwords, LibraryThing and GoodReads this afternoon. i did it gladly and with pleasure, since i enjoyed the book, and we all like to help each other out, don't we? best thing about the internet, i think, actually - there truly is a kind, helpful, sharing culture out there, and i'm lucky enough to know/communicate with some of the loveliest promoters of that phiosophy, who promote it simply by being themselves. it gives me the warm fuzzies on a reguar basis. anyway, here's what i had to say about it:

"I enjoyed this book very much. The main character is warm and giving, the supporting characters are human and three-dimensional, and the story and the world it is set in are well-thought-out, detailed, engaging, exciting and interesting. It's an excellent and thoughtful debut, and I'm really looking forward to reading the rest of the series."

seriously - go buy it, and read it - it rocks! ;o)

---

there was another storm this morning, at about seven o'clock. right over our heads. the thunder woke me up with a jump - the only time i don't mind being woken by sudden a loud noise. it was absolutely lovely. the rain had cooled the air as it hammered down, the lightning was fresh and clean, and the crashing and rumbling of the thunder was just so deliciously comfortng. it swells my heart with bliss to remember it, and it lulled me back to sleep with a smile on my face.

.

Deathdream #11

2010-05-31T17:53:00.000+01:00

She hit the ground - rolling, tumbling, sliding. Bouncing to a stop, she thought the experience really ought to hurt more than it actually did. Sitting up, her head spinning, she once more took stock of her surroundings. This time she found herself in a cobbled alley. It was twilight, and everything around her was grey and fuzzy, including the sky. Leaning back against the lumpy stone wall behind her, she regarded those on either side, stretching away into the gloom, trying to catch her breath.

Using the wall behind her to lever herself to a standing position, she dusted herself down, and shook her head to clear it. The walls extended to just above head height, with various bits of other walls and roofs visible above this.

Then it hit her. She had sat up facing in the same direction that she had been travelling, yet she had sat back to rest against a wall behind her. Purly's words returned:

"...Your mind's closing stuff off as you go. You can only go forward. If you go back, they'll have you..."

Cautiously, she leaned towards the wall that closed off the end of the alley, and placed her ear to it. Her eyes widened as she heard those same unsettling sounds she'd heard behind the wall in the room with Purly. They were quieter, sounded further away than they had, but they were still, unmistakeably, there. Straightening up, she began to think.

So. Space seemed to mean little here. She had no idea how far or how long she had travelled through that void to reach this alley. However, she had vague memories of floating there for some time. It had been utterly black, and she'd had no sense of movement, though she had certainly arrived in the alley at some speed. But perhaps there was no air in there to create wind to batter her face and tug at her clothes? She shied away from this thought, however, since that would mean that she had been travelling through a vacuum. Yet she had not suffered the effects of depressurisation. The saliva in her mouth had not boiled, and she had not blacked out. At least, she believed she had not. The blackness in that place, though, was so profound, that she wondered if she would even have been able to tell. But she seemed to recall a coherent chain of thought, even if she could no longer say what any of the links in that chain had been. Perhaps she had only been unconscious and dreaming? But she dismissed that idea, because....

The ground trembled. Just a little, but she felt it. Quickly pressing her ear back to the wall, adrenaline began to flood her system. Her heart rate and breathing increased as her fight or flight instinct kicked in. The sounds were clearer. Closer. Fighting was not an option, certainly not yet. She had no idea what "they" were, but she most certainly did not want to meet "them".

She chose flight.

.

procrastinating

2010-05-31T16:56:00.000+01:00

i'm currently trying to get around to writing the next part of Deathdream. however, since i have absolutely no idea what happens next (other than one or two vague ideas involvng cobbles and rooftops and walls...um...), i thought i'd write this instead.

i'm still trying to work out how the writing part of my brain functions. so far, it seems to be, rather like the rest of me, fairly erratic. i seem to go for days not feeling it, then get a quick burst of a day or so, then nothing much again for a bit. check the posting dates and times of deahdream and you'll see what i mean. in between, though, i seem to get these occasional flashes of what can only be described as "Other Stuff".

(hmmm...that's an awful lot of "seeming"... *editor-self raps writer-self over the knuckles with a wooden ruler that goes "byoyoyoyoyonnng"*)

take this morning, for instance. i was suspended between waking and sleeping and, as has happened to me before when i've been in this place, the germ of a story sidled into my head. not a very long one though. i suppose it would more-or-less be categorised as "flash fiction" (which is, BTW, a term whose meaning i'm still only hazily familliar with...). the weird thing was, i was actually dreaming in words. i don't mean i was dreaming a voice telling me the story, i mean i was actually watching the words appear before my eyes, overlaid on the scene they were describing. which, of course, didn't strike me as the slightest bit odd at the time, since i was dreaming, and these things don't.

but it strikes me as somewhat odd now. encouraging, but odd. because this is kinda sorta how i read. i see the words, but i also see the pictures...

forgive me, i'm rambling. i'm also, as it happens, cursing myself, since i could remember every single word when i woke up. and it seemed coherent (which, let's face it, so often isn't the case), and i didn't write it down.

damn! damn! damn!

and now, thanks to the usual distractions of a busy day (doing little but reading), most of it has disappeared back to where it came from. i am kicking myself so hard at the moment, because i can remember the basic shape of it, but not the linguistic nuances that made it more than just words strung together.

it's gone flat.

***

just as an aside, it occurs to me to wonder if that's where i keep my story silt, between the shores of sleeping and waking...?

Deathdream #10

2010-05-30T20:12:00.000+01:00

"P... Purly?"

The girl sat very still, relaxed, and continued her calm scrutiny.

Marina was baffled. A million questions once again squirmed through her mind. But all she could say was, "You're here?"

"Yes. I have to be."

Marina looked around the room, taking in the fact that it was practically empty. Nothing sat on the bare, dusty floorboards save Purly's chair, and the only thing that adorned the walls was a stone mantelpiece. No hearth, no fireplace, just the mantelpiece. No window and, as she turned to look behind her, no door. Just another blank wall.

She turned back to look at the girl who's head was, once again, bent to her embroidery, her fingers flickering with blinding speed and agonising slowness as she worked each stitch into the circle of stretched linen she held.

"They're coming for you, you know," said Purly, in a conversational tone, without moving her head or, as far as Marina could see, her lips. "That's why you can't go back. Your mind's closing stuff off as you go. You can only go forward. If you go back, they'll have you. You shouldn't really look back, even. You're going to have to use it. Soon, too."

"They? Who are they? And use what?"

"Your courage. Your confidence. Your body. Your ability," said Purly, ignoring the first part of the question. "Anything you've got, really. Including your name." She paused. "If you remember it, that is."

"But I can't! I don't know what it is!" said Marina, almost in a wail.

"You'll have to work something out, then. Can't let them get you. If you're chased, you can't get caught, or it really is all over."

Marina shivered at the cold certainty radiating from this ten year old girl. Suddenly, her knees gave out, and she slumped to the floor, her monochrome clothes billowing around her in ripples and waves. Sitting cross-legged on the dusty floor, her hands in her lap, Marina stared at the patterns in the grain of the scuffed boards. They began to undulate before her eyes, but she paid this no heed.

She was thinking.

A person may have many names, throughout their life. Some given, some taken, some self-bestowed. Of these, any one of them may be their true name, but it was most likely to be a name one gives to oneself. Then she stopped this thought with another.

The veracity of a person's name depended on the knowledge and instinct of the person that had given it, surely? If a person gave themself a name, but had little self-knowledge, that could not possibly be their true name, since it did not reflect them truly. Likewise, if a stranger bestowed a name on a person, even if that stranger had no knowledge of the person they were naming, but still felt it instinctively, surely that could be a name as true as any other?

She searched around inside herself, and found little to examine. However she had got here, wherever here was, it seemed to have wiped her memory and knowledge of herself clean. But since there was little of her self or her memory to know in this place, surely any name she gave herself would, by default, be true? As far as it went, at least?

She decided that, at the moment, until she found out something more, this could only be the case, and she would just have to believe it as hard as she could.

"I am Marina." She whispered. Then, more loudly, "I am Marina. I came from the water, and I can sing them from the trees."

At this, Purly looked up, piercing Marina and pinning her to the wall with the sharpness of the look shot from her eye. "How did you know that?" she demanded.

"Because I do. Because I can," said Marina, sitting up a little straighter, and returning the sharp look with one of her own. "Right here, right now, I am Marina, and I sing them from the trees." Then she deflated a little, almost imperceptibly. "But I have no trees to sing them from."

"Better find some, then, before they find you," was the succinct reply.

Marina privately agreed with this, though she had absolutely no idea of how to go about finding trees in this small, square, shabby, windowless room.

There must be a way out. There had to be. She found it utterly impossible to believe that the cosmos had decreed she should spend eternity trapped in this small place.

Getting to her feet, Marina began to examine the walls, he floor, the ceiling. The walls were all apparently solid, constructed of plaster over bricks, or perhaps stone. The floor did not sound hollow when she banged it with her fists and heels. No echo or hollowness sounding there, at all. The ceiling, she could not reach, not even when she had borrowed Purly's chair and stood on it.

She did not, however, examine the wall that had so recently held the door she had entered by. She had taken Purly's warning to heart, and was not going to look back for anything. She could only look forward, and hope she chose the right path. And besides that, when she walked close to that wall, taking great pains not to touch it, look at it, or otherwise acknowledge its presence, she heard things. Growlings and slitherings. Grisly cracklings, and wet hissings and tearings. And, very far away, very hard to hear - but there to be heard, nonetheless - there were shrieking and wailings and moanings, as of the trapped and the despairing. She had no wish to become a member of that muted chorus. So she ignored that one wall, continuing her examination of the rest of the room with minute attention to detail, and systematic thoroughness.

Then, there came a small, slightly exasperated sigh. "Marina, you're looking in the wrong place."

Then Marina realised. Her eyes turned to the mantelpiece. Snatching a knife from her belt, she dove at the blank wall framed by the mantelpiece, and drove the knife in to it with all of her might. The wall transmuted to a black void, and she was sucked through.

Deathdream #9

2010-05-30T14:53:00.001+01:00

On reaching the top, Marina stopped, one hand still resting on the banister, staring down the long corridor in front of her. The walls were raw plaster, grey and rotting, punctuated with doors on either side. The end of the corridor was lost in darkness.
She took a hesitant step forward, and then stopped. She could feel something pulling on her. Treacly strings of... something... were seemingly attached to her bones and organs, exerting a gentle tug. Not enough to drag her backwards, but enough to drag on her soul when she tried to move forwards. Fearfully she glanced over her shoulder. Nothing but the continuation of the corridor stretching away into shadow behind her. No stairway, no atrium, no light source that she could see. No sound but the soft hissing of her breath, and the venous hum of her blood, rushing through her flesh.
Her left hand was resting on another round brass doorknob. The door itself was a greyish white panelled affair - heavy and solid. The surface of the paint leprous with bubbling and peeling patches, a sticky amber substance oozing through the odd crack and join. It was not an inviting door. But she grasped the handle with both hands and turned it, nonetheless. This one turned more easily than the outer door, but was still stiff. It availed her nothing, however, since the door, when she tentatively pushed, did not budge a millimetre. It was very firmly jammed. She thought at first that it may be locked, but she could not see a keyhole. Then, looking closer, she saw that it did not have a crack between the frame and the door itself, either. She could not, when she tried, even get a fingernail between the two. The door was part of the frame. Not a real door at all, but an elaborate piece of panelling.

A joke. A three dimensional trompe l'oeil.

This gave her pause. She tried another door, then another, moving from door to door with increasing desperation as she tried, again and again, to find the one true portal in this corridor of falsehoods. Mindlessly, now, she banged on doors, rattled handles, and shrieked for someone to let her out, let her in, let her free, let her breathe, as she noticed that the corridor walls were beginning, almost imperceptibly, to move closer and closer together. Her panic increased to the borders of hysteria as she imagined the walls closing in on her completely, crushing her organs, grinding her bones against each other, until she could no longer move or breathe.

Then she saw, through the haze of her madness, light seeping under one of the nearby doors. Flinging herself at it, she wrestled with the handle until it grudgingly turned, and threw herself into the room beyond.

In the centre of the room sat Purly on a straight-backed wooden chair. Glancing up from her embroidery, casual and unsurprised, she said, "Oh, hello Marina."

.

Deathdream #8

2010-05-25T16:15:00.000+01:00

...and here's a bit more. a little boring, perhaps, but still...

by the way, this is going up with little or no editing, as i need distance to edit properly, so if i ever pull it together and put it up somewhere as a whole, repetitions and clunky sentences will be dealt with then.
...um...sorry about that....hope it's not too dull or irritating nonthless...

-

Hobbling and wincing as the gravel abused the soles of her feet, Marina came to the end of the path, which opened out into a wide gravelled apron before the building. She stopped, gazing up at the edifice before her.

Massive and circular, the yellow-grey building loomed over her. Three storeys tall, there were high windows all around the sides and, around the top of the first and third storeys, intricate stone friezes decorated the walls. Looking in despair at the wide expanse of gravel between her and the building, she gritted her teeth and began a mincing traverse. Halfway across, she decided that the mincing was just prolonging the pain in her feet, so she changed her stride to a wider, more confident one and tried to ignore the pummelling on the soles of her feet. Her approach was rapid, after that, and she was soon at the bottom of a set of three steps that led up to a flag stoned pavement that seemed to circle the building. With relief, she stepped on to the smooth stones; her only discomfort now was the gritty dust between her toes, and the odd sharp piece of gravel that had stuck to the bottom of her feet. These, however, were easy to ignore out of existence. She wandered around the building a little way, looking at the frieze. It was intricate, yes, but details were hard to make out. The sandstone it was carved from was badly weathered, leaving whatever it had been to resemble strange creatures doing strange things. Indecipherable, but fascinating, the frieze held her attention for quite some time. She wandered all the way around the building, the representations making less and less sense, until she came back to where she’d started from, and stood for a moment.

It still made no sense to her conscious mind, but something about it was tugging at her subconscious, and she couldn’t work out what it was. Like the question of how she got into the lake, though, she knew that she probably would not be able to work out the puzzle any time soon, so she let it go. For now.

Much more interesting at the moment was what was behind the door she stood in front of. It was a white painted wooden affair, about ten feet tall, and proportionately wider than a normal door. There were about a dozen panes of glass inset into it, but the interior of the building appeared darker than she would expect, considering the number of windows around the outside of it. This, coupled with the reflections of sky on the glass, was enough to render her unable to see what lay beyond the door. Looking around for a handle, she found a round one at knee level, and bent down to try and open the door.

Her hands, no matter how tightly she grasped the orb, slipped and slid around its polished brass surface, and she struggled and cursed, trying to get the handle to work. Eventually, using both hands, she got it to turn, and pushed the door slowly inwards, stepping into the interior of the building.

A shaft of light from the open door followed her in, but that disappeared as she walked a little further, and the door shut firmly behind her. Spinning around, she was confronted by a smooth, blank wall, which she followed with her eyes, until it was lost in the shadows further along. Turning back to face the centre of the building, she examined her surroundings. The ceiling was supported by pillars at various points, and extended a good thirty feet, before ending abruptly at two concentric circles of pillars about ten feet apart, surrounding the central part of the floor. Warily, she moved forwards, weaving around pillars, until she came to the central area, which was flooded with sunlight. At each point of the compass, a stairway curved away from the flagged floor. These linked two galleries, one on each floor, which circled the space completely. In the domed ceiling high above, there was a wide, multifaceted skylight, allowing the sunlight to pour thickly into this atrium, weighing heavily on her head.

The central space was large, and completely empty, save for her. It looked somewhat dusty and abandoned, but the sunlight had warmed the flagstones so they felt soft on her feet, almost like hard pillows. Marina turned full circle, looking for some way out of this seemingly abandoned space. Finding none obvious, her attention shifted to the nearest stairway, which was covered in a once grand but now threadbare red carpet. She decided that she may find some clue to how to get out on one of the other floors, if they weren’t both empty as well. Seizing the banister with her left hand, she began to climb, anticlockwise, up to the first gallery of this strange building.

.

Deathdream #7

2010-05-25T13:27:00.000+01:00

really enjoyed writing this bit...was in the zone...

-

A soft, warm summer breeze tugged at her shift, making her cloak ripple and shimmer in the bright sunlight as she slowly made her way across the grass to the edge of the path. Leaning over one of the lower points in the shrub border, she saw that the path was made of gravel. She knew she must follow the path, but to spare her bare feet, she would walk parallel to it, on the soft grass of the lawn.

As she walked, she trailed her fingers along the tightly-clipped bushes on her right. The feel of the tips of the leaves tickling the places where her fingers joined her palm was pleasant, and she half-closed her eyes – almost floating along the grass, doing nothing but savouring the sensations of foliage and soft, warm air against her skin.

Abruptly, she was brought back to herself as she came hard up against a dense hedge at the edge of the lawn that she had not noticed before. Dark, forest green in colour, it formed an impenetrable barrier to any further forward movement. And it worried her. keeping her eyes fixed on the barrier, lest it move and engulf her, her breath coming a little quicker as her hackles began to rise once again, Marina edged to her right, groping blindly for one of those lower points in the path’s shrubbery edges, so she could step over on to the path.

Backing away, her eyes still fixed on the unexpected hedge, she failed to find any lower places, but the dense foliage seemed to have opened out in this part of the path so, keeping her eyes on the hedge for as long as she could, she edged her way in between the small, prickly branches. As she pushed through, she felt the branches tear at her hair, her cloak, her shift, her skin. Terrified that they would rip her and her clothing to shreds, she contorted her body into all sorts of odd positions, twisting and writhing her sinuous way through, as her feet were prickled unkindly by dead leaves, dry earth, and roots.

The squirming seemed to go on forever until, at last, she felt her right hand once again break through into fresh air, quickly followed by her arm, and then the rest of her body.

Wincing as she stepped on to the wide, sandy coloured gravel path, she looked down to check her monochrome garments had not been too badly damaged by her traverse through the clinging, snatching branchlets. Fortunately, they had not. The hem of her shift still fluttered around her ankles, and her feathered cloak only seemed to have lost one or two feathers to the tugging and grasping of the shrubs. She peered into the depths of the dense woodland now beside her, and saw a couple of feathers glinting in the gloom. This made her feel somehow uneasy, but she decided to leave them there, since she had no wish to go back into that gloom. Even as she watched, branches and twigs in there seemed to be growing longer, sharper, more dense. Ivy was twining itself up from the ground, around the wizened and twisted trunks and branches, until that way was as impenetrable as the hedge that had first caused her to move on to the path.

Glancing along the wide pathway, she saw that the other side was similarly blocked; the vegetation was now, also, much, much higher, blocking out the sunlight, and beginning to cast the wide pathway into gloom. Glancing behind her, she saw the path narrowing to nothing not far behind her; ivy tendrils crawling and snaking across the path as she watched, trees springing through the gravel and barring her way. Looking ahead, she could still see blue sky and small cumulus clouds, framing the roof of a sandstone building at the end of the path. Hackles rising for a third time at the slithering and rustling in the growing green gloom behind her, she hurried forwards.

.

Deathdream #6

2010-05-24T19:47:00.000+01:00

There was a lurch, and a pain behind her eyes. Her foot went down further than she expected it to, and she flailed her arms as she began to tumble forward, unable to open her eyes from the pain of light lancing through her eyelids.

She felt arms around her as Biffy caught her at a peculiar and ungainly angle, and she struggled to stand upright, her head spinning, feeling grass beneath her bare feet.

Still unsteady, she held on to Biffy’s upper arm with her left hand, and he supported her by that elbow, as she shaded her eyes with her right, and squinted them open a tiny slit. A blur of greens and fawns swam across her watery vision, and she screwed her eyes up tight again, placing her hand across them.

“No no no... Just shade them,” said Biffy, tilting her hand back up, and making her wince. “That way, you’ll get used to the light quicker.”

“But it hurts!”

She felt his shoulder move in a shrug.

Then, she realised that the towel had finally fallen off as she fell and struggled upright. Instantly, she dropped into a crouched ball, curled as tightly around herself as she could possibly manage. Groping her hands around for the towel – which surely could not be far away – she whimpered in mortification. Soon, she was clawing at the grass around her as the towel, like the nightdress before it, simply was not there any more.

Finally, in despair, she yanked a big handful of grass and, to her surprise, pulled a sheet of turf up with it, which she wrapped around her shoulders like a cloak. As she stood up in relief, she opened her eyes a little again. Squinting, her eyes still swimming with tears, the pain, at least, was gone, and she was now covered by a long, feathered cloak.

Soothing this black and white confection back over her shoulders, she looked down at the long black and white shift that mercifully now covered her. She sighed in relief. Looking further down, and wiggling her toes, she realised that she was still barefoot, but this did not bother her at all. The grass, after all, tickled her feet pleasantly, and the air was warm. Looking around, she found herself standing on a manicured lawn, which was bisected by a path lined with shrubs of all sorts of curious shapes and sizes. The lawn was surrounded by trees with dark, deep shadows hovering beneath them. Seeing these shadows made the back of her neck prickle as her hackles rose. The only open aspect she could see was in the direction the path led. Over the tops of the higher of the oddly-shaped shrubs, she could make out a roof.

But she was alone. Of Biffy, Amanita, and Purlieu, there was no sign.

.

Deathdream #5

2010-05-24T17:16:00.000+01:00

Biffy shrugged. “It’s as good a name as any, I suppose. Come on, then.”

The girls began to fold their trousers neatly, and then each rolled them up and tucked them under their arms.

“Wait – what? You’re going somewhere?”

“Yes, we are,” said Biffy, emphasising the ‘we’ to include Marina.

“But...but...” She looked around furtively. The last time she had seen it, her nightdress had been lying where she had left it, sopping in a puddle on the floor, with a trickle running from the puddle out of the French windows. Now, though, there was no sign of it. Biffy, 'Nita and Purly didn’t seem to notice anything amiss, though, so she hurriedly followed them out of the windows, on to the walkway, and into the glowing dark, tugging the towel more tightly around her as she went. Being barefoot, too, she suddenly felt very exposed.

On reaching the end of the walkway, Marina stopped. Biffy and the girls were already stepping out smartly across the rock to her left, but she hesitated to put her foot on the rock when memories of the rock-swimming soul eater were still so fresh. In this strange and dreadful place, it seemed that even solid rock was not necessarily a good place to stand and walk. Especially if she really was a halfer – whatever that may turn out to mean. She stood there, undecided what to do, and watched three backs receding towards the black, light-sucking mass that curved around the little group of cabins, meeting the lakeshore on both sides of the rocky semicircle. They had apparently forgotten her existence, since none of them turned around to check she was still there, nor to make a gesture or a shout to hurry her on her way. She could feel panic beginning to rise at being left alone and, quickly making a decision that she would rather brave the creatures’ attentions than be left alone, she glanced at the lake to make sure there were no sinister shadows growing on its surface, she ran for it. Now was the time to see if the name she had given herself really would offer her at least a small measure of protection. Her bare feet slapping on the rock, struggling with the towel that seemed to constantly want to be left behind whilst it barely covered her, she raced after the figures that were growing yet smaller. They were getting hard to distinguish, too, against the backdrop of that black mass. The lake’s illumination and moonlight seemed unable to compete with it.

The faster she ran, the further away they seemed to be. Fear began to claw at her throat again, as she raced to catch up with them. She was now running so fast, it appeared that her feet were no longer touching the ground and, indeed, the rapid slapping had morphed into a whirring, rushing sound. Forgetting for a moment why she was running so fast, she gave in to the exhilaration of the speed, feeling that if she only stretched her arms and took a deep breath, something wonderful might happen. But that moment was gone in the instant she realised that she needed both of her arms to keep the towel, which seemed to be shrinking, covering her embarrassment.

On the edge of the light-sucking mass, Biffy turned around. “Oh – you’re here. Well – come on, then...” and disappeared into the mass.

Marina closed her eyes and stepped in after him.

.

SQUEEE!!!

2010-05-22T10:34:00.001+01:00

i just got my book in the post!!!

LOOK!!!

***HAPPYDANCE***

and once i figure out how to do it, i'll put a link to it in the sidebar.

(edit: hah! i did it! *beams proudly*)

Deathdream #4

2010-05-15T17:45:00.000+01:00

only a short section this time, as Doctor Who is on soon, and i need to make some food first, but at least the swimmer has a name, now...
...
The swimmer was sitting, knees drawn up to her chin, in the middle of the bed. Feeling vulnerable.

The rain had stopped, and the moon had come back out from behind the clouds, and Biffy had wandered outside to continue his vigil over the lake, sitting astride the balustrade, about halfway along the sloping walkway. Purly and 'Nita had fetched her some towels so she could dry herself off. Now she was naked in a strange place with no memory of who she was. The girls were, once again, sitting on the end of the bed, their backs to her. Clutching the towel tight around her, she tentatively asked, “Uh... Purly? When you said it was bad that I didn’t know my name, you never said why...”

Without turning round, 'Nita parroted, in a singsong voice, “To name the thing is to control the thing. To defeat the monster, you must first speak its name. When summoned by the true name, each creature must respond.” And then she was silent, almost as if she’d never spoken.

The swimmer was nonplussed. She tried again. “Purly? Can you explain that to me?”

Purly turned around with the exasperation of the child for the idiot adult. “She means that you need your name to control yourself, and to stop them controlling you. When neither of you know your name, they can control you a bit. If they find out before you do, they can control all of you. But first control goes to you if you know your name. See?”

“...I...I think so....” said the slightly confused swimmer. “...but...who are...they?”

Purly rolled her eyes in exasperation. She made a wide gesture towards the French windows. “Them!”

“The things in the lake?”

“No! Yes! Both. All of them!” Purly turned her back on the swimmer, the set of her shoulders showing her annoyance at the swimmer’s density.

And the swimmer saw, as plainly as if it had been written in white on a black wall in front of her, that there were, out there in the dark, more things to fear than these ‘soul eaters’. She shivered a little, and drew her knees tighter under her chin. Trying to make a solid, impenetrable barrier against all of the fearsome things that may yet be lurking out of, or in, plain sight.

She began to wonder, in earnest, what her name could be.

She tried a few out. Alexandra? No. Natalie? Alicia? Helga? No. Julie? Mary? No. She ground her teeth in frustration.

She looked at Purly’s back. “Purly? What if I named myself? Would that give me any protection?”

Purly turned around. “Dunno.” She said, thoughtfully. Then turned and shouted out of the windows: “Biffy!”

He turned around. “What?”

“Can she name herself? Would that help?”

Biffy swung his leg over the balustrade and walked up to the windows, gazing at the swimmer. She felt uncomfortable, and pulled the towels yet tighter around herself.

“Dunno,” he said. “It might, I suppose. What are you going to name yourself, then?”

“Marina.”

“Why?”

“Because I came from the water.”

blogging in the sunshine, and Minotaur

2010-05-15T16:06:00.003+01:00

Good afternoon, dear reader!

This is coming to you live from my knackered garden, and the sun is shining, so I can barely see what I am typing. But who cares? I haz warms, and have bared my neck and arms and legs for the first time in what feels like forever. And I just saw a butterfly flutter by... *sigh*

Well, actually, the “live” thing is a bit of a fib, since the wifi signal doesn’t work this far away. ‘coz, y’know – I live in Chatsworth House, innit? XD No, really – I’m typing this into Word then I’m gonna cut and paste.

Ooo! Hang on a mo....*runs to fetch camera*

...

So now I’ve taken some pics and, when I post this, you’ll be able to see the estate in all its dubious glory. I’ll post ‘em at the bottom.

...

Where was I? Oh, right – I’ll get on to the main subject in a moment, but first, I want to share a tiny bliss moment I had yesterday, whilst on the bus to work.

Yes, the bus.

Nonono – there’s nothing wrong with Newbie, she’s looooovely! *sigh* But I have to concentrate when I ride her, coz she’s a sprightly little bugger, and she won’t catch me if I cock up. And yesterday, I was more likely than usual to cock up, since I’d had 3 hours’ sleep, due to .... dun dun duuuuuhhhh!!! The Return Of The Cramps!!! Heh – it’s no biggie, but the buggers always*do* seem to wake me.

Anyway...

So I was on the bus, and I saw something I’ve been waiting to see for what seems like forever. I always wait for it, and it always seems faaar too long in coming. But I saw it. Yesterday. And it filled my heart with bliss and made my eyes fill with tears of gratitude.

I saw the first white dusting of Mayblossom on the hawthorn trees.

It may not seem like a big deal but, to me, it’s the signal that, in the words of The Dooberies, summer’s on it’s way. We have a saying in this part of the world:

Ne’er shed a clout*
‘Till May be out

(*clothing)

Meaning: don’t discard yer woollies ‘till you see the blossom on the Maytree (hawthorn). Even then, it’s not an absolute guide, since the sun’s just gone in, and I’ve had to slip me cardi back on – the breeze is still pretty cold. But I care not. I care not. Because the warms are nearly here, and I miss being able to expose my skin to the bliss of the sun’s rays.

...

In other news, which was, in fact, supposed to be the point of this post (but now seems to pale into insignificance beside the pale beauty of the Mayblossom), my very first effort at writing a novel is now up on the internetz for all and sundry to read. And, having read through it for the final edit, I’m actually rather proud of it.

Oh, who am I kidding? I love it, and am enormously proud of it. It’s called Minotaur, and it’s posted on the Authonomy website.

So, y’know – go have a look. Please. Leave comments if you wish. Honestly, I hope you like it, but I won’t mind if you don’t. I wrote it purely for myself, after all, and one man’s meat is another man’s poison. But I *am* very interested to know what you think...

It will soon be available in print, too – for a given value of soon, as I’m still waiting for the artwork from hubby. But that’s ok – we know how fickle the muse can be don’t we, dear reader?

...

The sun seems to have gone in properly, now, and the clouds are gathering. I wouldn’t be surprised if it rains in a bit. But no matter. I shall go inside, and I shall post pictures, and you can see what a mess our darling chickens have made of our once lush and inviting lawn. The little buggers are eating what’s left of it as I type...

...

view from the back door. that's hubby's poor dead bike under the cover. Newbie is just out of shot to the right.

here we have the first view of the garden proper. to the left is the veg patch - not growing anything this year, but every now and again, we turn the earth over so the chickens can scratch about for delicious treats.

the view to the end of the garden. as you can see, we no longer have a lawn. the girls have trampled and scratched and eaten it out of existence. that's their home, on the right. built by my clever hubby.

further up the garden is the pond. sometimes, we get newts. they are such gorgeous little creatures....

back down the garden, we get another view of the coop, and the girls. the stone mushroom marks the grave of our first and most beloved rat, Jeremy.

here's where i was writing the post from earlier. jolly comfy it was, too... the pillar behind it was also built by hubby, to use as a base for his telescope.

the girls. that's Alan at the back (named after a character in the delightfully bizarre and much missed series Green Wing). Ruby (Ruby Murray - chicken curry. geddit?...) is at the front, looking at me suspiciously, as usual.

and here's me enjoying the rays. Sunshine Squeaky.

Deathdream #3

2010-05-13T17:54:00.001+01:00

really enjoyed writing this bit. hope you enjoy reading it...

...

“Really,” said the older girl, conversationally, “You ought to find out what your name is – it’s bad that you don’t know. Really bad”

Unsure if she really wanted to know, the swimmer asked, in a faint voice, “...why...?”

“’Coz they’ll get you and eat you up and crunch your bones and spit out the gristle!” shrieked the younger, gleefully.

“Amanita!” snapped Biffy’s voice from outside. “That’s enough!”

“But they will!” insisted Amanita, with a small pout.

“’Nita – shush!” said the older girl. “You know you have to do as Biffy says.”

“Don’t see why...” grumbled Amanita, resentfully.

“Because he’s our brother and he came here to look after us.”

This struck the swimmer hard, as she suddenly realised that she not only had no idea of who she was, but of where she was, either. Or, for that matter, why. Continuing to stare out at the menacing shadows sliding below the surface of the glowing water, she racked her brains, trying to discover the answers to any of these questions. True enough, she remembered the swimming very well. But, before that...? Nothing; except for the vague, half-grasped wisp of a memory of that boat.

Falling...or being pushed? To where?

Her eyes unfocussed as her thoughts turned ever inward. Probing, searching the inside of her mind for something – anything – that could give her some glimmer of sense. But all there was to be found was darkness - clinging shreds of misty darkness, in which the one dimly shining beacon was the dawning awareness of swimming in the lake.

The lake.

Refocusing her eyes to the rainy, glowing blackness outside of the cabin, she was just in time to see one of the shadows, out in the centre, begin grow bigger and move towards the shore.

This was wrong. It shouldn’t be able to do that. That...whatever it was...should...not...be able to grow like that. And the speed! When she had first seen it, the shadow had been out near the middle of the lake. Now, however, it was heading for the shore at a speed no aquatic creature ought to be able to manage - the water humping up as it pushed a wave before it. But it was. She waited, breath held, for it to erupt through the water, spraying fountains of sparking water from its huge body – and it was huge by now – roaring or screaming as the rain sheeted down its squamous flanks.

But it did not.

“Biffy,” called Amanita.

“In a moment, ‘Nita,”

“Biffy, come on!” said the older one, a note of urgency in her voice.

“Just a minute, Purlieu,” he replied, calmly. “I want to get a decent view....”

It came for the shore, faster and faster, the swimmer was sure that soon it must erupt through the surface, or dash itself to pieces on the undulating rock of the shore. But it did neither. Instead, it disappeared just as it got to the rock.

And a hump appeared on the shore. The rock turning fluid and humping up, just as the water had, as the creature had sped through it. But now it was speeding, albeit much more slowly, through solid rock.

“Biffy!” shrieked the girls in unison.

Biffy evidently had decided that now was the moment, as he put his hands on the balustrade and lightly vaulted onto the walkway, to lean against the wall just inside the windows, and watch the creature’s approach.

The swimmer’s eyes were locked on the moving hump, as it came closer and closer to the cabin, too scared to scream at the visceral horror of watching some unknown and patently dangerous creature doing such a weird and impossible thing. She opened her mouth, and tried with all her might to scream out the fear that was clamouring in her tightened chest, but all that would or could escape was a thin and reedy whisper. As the terror clawed at her chest, and the cords stood out on her neck with the dreadful effort, she felt a small, warm hand on hers.

“Don’t worry – the stilts will stop it,” said Purlieu, squeezing.

This was no comfort. The swimmer was rooted solidly to the bed – paralysed - unable to do anything as her eyes, locked on the moving hump, widened further to take in the approaching doom of the monster. As it disappeared under the hut with a rumble, she drew breath and tried to scream again as the rumbling grew louder, now under her feet, and the creature moved about beneath the cabin. Still nothing but the reedy whisper left her chest.

“It’ll go in a minute,” said Biffy, watching the swimmer with an air of calm.

She barely heard him.

After an eternity, his words proved right, as the rumbling calmed a little, and the hump reappeared and headed back towards the lake. As it reached the shore, the gigantic shadow was in the water once more, and it sped rapidly back towards the centre. Gradually, it receded, diminished, and was, once again, just one of many shadows under the surface of the glowing water.

The swimmer began gasping for breath.

Biffy watched her collapse forward on to her hands and knees, her body heaving, as she fought to recoup the breath she had spent whilst trying to scream.

“Told you so,” he observed, with mild amusement.

Still gasping, the swimmer turned wide, frightened eyes on the young man. What... what the hell...was that...thing?” she managed, between heaving breaths.

Biffy raised his shoulder in a casual half-shrug. “Soul eater.”

Her breath stilled. “A what?”

“Soul eater.” was the laconic reply. “It was looking for you. They love halfers. I think they taste better or something...” he trailed off, looking a little thoughtful. Then he shrugged again, properly, this time. “Dunno what they are, exactly, but that’s what they’re called. Never seen one – not properly. They stay under the surface.”

The swimmer hunkered back on to her haunches, almost curling into a ball, and began to shiver. “It was...horrible,” she whimpered. “Nothing should be able to do that.”

“Yeah, well – you’re not in Kansas now, Toto.”

Amanita giggled. Purlieu admonished Biffy with, “That wasn’t nice! How would you like it? You’re rotten and horrible!”

Crouching down next to the shivering swimmer and, with a maturity beyond her years, Purlieu put her arm around the swimmer’s shoulders, saying gently, “It’s all right – it’s gone now. It was just a scout, and it knows it can’t get to you in here.”

.

description of a storm

2010-05-08T12:33:00.001+01:00

currently editing Minotaur - hopefully to publish indie-style. we'll see. it's a lovely job in itself, though, as i get to read something i wrote a year and a half ago, with enough distance that i can appreciate it. case in point: a description of a storm that i just fell in love with all over again.
jen has taken a walk over the downs on a beautiful summer day in an attempt to clear a hangover. falling asleep with her back against a tree, she awakens to a gathering storm. i love storms, and am likely to do the exact things Jen does in this extract - including laughing like a loon, whooping, and shouting with the visceral joy of being in amongst it...

-

When Jen woke, the day had begun to cloud over, and there was an ominous rumble in the distance. The breeze was getting stronger and gustier, and the leaves of the oak tree had gone from whispering, to an excited chatter amongst the branches above her head. She glanced around her. The shadow of a distant storm was creeping inexorably towards her. Lightning flickered in the depths of the cloud. She counted. Thunder rumbled again. It was a good five miles off, but closing fast. Better get moving. She rose to her feet stiffly, back kinked and etched with the striations of the bark she’d been leaning on for so long. She turned and laid her hand affectionately on the tree, looking it up and down for a moment. Then she turned and set off for the dark smudge on the horizon that marked the position of Harrington Hall. Walking swiftly now in the gathering gloom and wind, she was glad that her sandals had rubber soles, but unsure how much good it would do her if she was caught in the open by the storm. She was astonished to realise that her hangover seemed to have all but vanished. She took a few skipping steps to test her head. Nothing. Laughing delightedly, she took off at a run, just for the sheer joy of being hangover-free and able to move normally again. She flew across the turf on the wings of the approaching storm’s wind, which seemed to be getting stronger by the minute, her hair whipping around her head like a wild fire. She reached the top of the last rise before the hall as the rain hit her in stair rods. She was instantly soaked to the skin and absolutely exhilarated. Throwing her arms wide, she spun around and around, greeting each crash of thunder and flash of lightning with whoops and yells loosed from the very centre of her being. Eventually, she realised that the thunder and lightning were far too close together and the storm was very nearly overhead. Certainly, it was a very bad time to be dancing on top of a hill yelling like a maniac, so she turned and sprinted down the slope towards the gateway in the wall of the hall.

.

Deathdream #2

2010-05-05T21:09:00.001+01:00

still have no idea what this is. but here's the next bit, anyway...

...

The young man grunted. “You’ll need to find out,” he stated, with firmness and just a hint of... What? Warning?

Confused and growing slightly alarmed at her inability to remember her own name – feeling sure she had one – the swimmer turned back towards the two girls washing themselves and their clothes in the moonlight. But they had both lowered their arms to stare out of the French windows, over her shoulders, and out towards the dark brightness of the sky.

The youngest momentarily flicked her gaze to the swimmer and said, “Now see what you did!” Moving her eyes back to the sky, a frown creased her features. The swimmer turned back around until she was facing out towards the lake.

The wind was picking up, tugging at her wet nightdress and trying to tease the military cap from her straggling tresses. Holding the cap down with one hand, she lifted her chin and gazed towards the moon. Its face was being slowly covered by sliding clouds – as black and lightless as the masses on the shore of the lake. Glancing down at Biffy she noticed that he, too, was regarding the moon’s slow disappearance, but with an equitable expression on his face, as though he had seen this many times before, and did not share the youngest girl’s annoyance with the situation.

Spits of rain began to land on her bare arms and the swimmer, despite being already wet, instinctively edged backwards to the shelter of the room behind her. The rain became heavier as they watched the last corner of the moon’s face disappear behind the slithering clouds, and she could hear it over the sound of the wind: a soft-sharp pattering on the wood of the walkway and cabin roof. As it became heavier, she looked towards Biffy – standing as he had been before, but with his face now turned towards the crowded darkness of the sky. Realising that she should not, now, be able to see him, she wondered at her ability to do just that. Staring at the back of his head, she watched as the rain, coming down in earnest, now, plastered his curls to his head. Then it came to her. Slowly lifting her eyes to the lake, the swimmer took in what was before her.

It was not the moon’s light that had given the lake its milky glow – it was the water itself. As more and more clouds piled into the sky above them, the water increased its translucent radiance, the ripples and wavelets creating scintillating patterns that dazzled and mesmerised.

Except...

“What are they?” she asked of her three companions, raising a shaking finger to point.

Shadows moved beneath the surface of the water.

Turning to glance up at the swimmer, Biffy casually remarked, “You’re lucky you got here when you did – a halfer like you – ten minutes more and they’d have had a field day.” Thus unburdened, he returned his gaze to the opposite direction – this time it was focussed, like those of the females, on the shadows sliding through the water.

The swimmer edged back further into the room, until the backs of her legs met the bed, on which she half-sat, half-slumped, her eyes still fixed on the teeming luminescence of the lake.

“Really,” said the older girl, conversationally, “You ought to find out what your name is – it’s bad that you don’t know. Really bad”

.

Deathdream #1

2010-05-02T15:59:00.001+01:00

i have absolutely no idea what this is, other than that it turned up in my head late one night, sometime last week...

Deathdream?

The moonlight on the lake gave the wavelets and ripples a milky appearance as she swam through them. Briefly pondering the question of how she had got here, or why, she thought she recalled being pushed off a boat, but could not be sure. She gave a mental shrug, deciding the how and the why did not matter and, for now, continued to swim. The water was neither cool nor hot. Rather, it was just about the same temperature as her body. She didn’t think this was odd, nor the feeling that her body was suspended in nothing as she swam.

Making little headway, but not yet tired, she glanced to her left, towards the shore. It was a brooding, black mass in the moonlight. She thought she saw the shapes of foliage along the line of the water, bulking up and receding, as if over a low hill or dune. But whatever it was, there was nothing at all in it that reflected the light of the nearly full moon, which filled the sky with its blazing light. The mass seemed, instead, intent on sucking the light out of the air, absorbing it like a sponge.

Turning her head away, she swam on. Progress was slow, yes, but it was not a struggle.

Presently, she saw something sticking up out of the water – a forest of oddly-shaped stumps. Swimming closer, she was able to determine that these were, in fact, statues. Strange steel representations, they seemed bolted to the lake bed, with their shoulders just below the waterline. Every now and again, a conjunction of wavelets would conspire to show her a brief glimpse of the curve of a shoulder, nothing more. Of that visible above the water, they had short, pole-like necks, and oddly shaped heads. Each was a flat dome, with a stylised face cast on to one side. And perched on about half were peaked military caps of one style or another. Real ones. Every face was turned towards the dark, light-sucking shore. Though each gave the appearance of scowling, the whole scene was one of wistful melancholy, which almost made her feel sorry for these steel constructions. However, she could not avoid the strange knowledge, or conclusion, that it was important that she, too should have a hat. Treading water for a moment, she chose a dark green one with an especially high peak, plucked it from the head of the unresponsive and uncaring statue, and settled it over the wet straggles of her hair, which she could feel sticking to her cheeks like damp seaweed.

Swimming on, she began, not to tire, but to falter. Her horizon across the water became closer and closer and, when she eventually floundered and got a mouthful of water, she stopped. Realising that there was little left in her, she turned on to her back, and made her slow way towards the shore. When her hands touched the smooth rock of the lake bed as it rose sharply behind her, she put them flat to it. Feeling the undulations of the rock as she did so, she crawled out a little, backwards, then stood, her nightdress clinging to her body and tangling her legs as she turned to look a the shore.

There, she saw several wooden cabins. Above the waterline, they nevertheless stood on waist-high stilts. Wondering who might live there, she took the nearest crooked walkway ramp up to one of them, and followed it to a small decking area outside of some French windows, which were open to the night. Just inside these windows, end-on, was a bed. On the end of the bed sat two young girls in pyjamas, dressing gowns, and slippers. Each had a pair of trousers in her hands, which she was holding up to the moonlight streaming through the open windows. The swimmer had the curious impression that they were washing the trousers in the moonlight.

She asked the girls, “Are you ok?”

The older one turned to regard the swimmer with a stern look, and said, “Well, I would be – if they paid me. Aren’t they supposed to pay me, at my age?”

“How old are you?” asked the swimmer.

“Ten,” was the firm reply.

The swimmer was at a loss to answer the girl’s question. Instead, she turned to look over her left shoulder at the lake, and was mildly surprised to see a young man of twenty or so. He was standing on the ground with his back to the railings, the balustrade level with his head. He turned to look up at her as she asked, “Who are you?”

“I’m Biffy,” was his curt reply. “Who the hell are you?”

“...I ...I don’t know,” she replied.

.

short story: Ink Devil

2010-04-24T23:30:00.000+01:00

i'm gonna do this quick before i start blushing again. this is the short story i mentioned in today's earlier post. with apologies to Show Of Hands, who's song i nicked the title from. really - my ink devil is nothing like theirs...

Ink Devil

Sunlight streamed through the high, dusty windows, as I idly wandered through the maze at the heart of this vast cathedral of knowledge and stories. I’d gone there because my ever-dwindling to-read pile had finally given up on me. I had tried going for walks, shopping, macramé, listening to music, drinking in front of the television’s flickering curse, but it was no good. I was twitching like a junkie needing a fix. Needing it badly. Oh, so badly.
So I headed for my temple. The place where all of the world, and so many things beyond, could be found gathered together in one magical place.
The cavernous building was ancient, and crumbling at the edges. It was so weathered, it resembled a sugar sculpture that had been left in a light mist for too long. God alone knows what its original purpose had been, or even how old it actually was. But it was old. And, to me, at least, it was beautiful.
The fierce sunlight drew odd half-seen shapes from the shadows cast by the barely recognisable but still disturbing gargoyles and statues that adorned its pocked and pitted walls. And it had beat down on my unprotected head as I had made my way there. By the time I arrived and walked through the gaping portico that adorned its entrance, slipping into the green-tinted shadows within, my head was beginning to ache, and my vision to become fuzzy.
I stopped for a moment in the marble-sheathed entrance hall, letting the cool atmosphere ease the aching of my head, and removing my sandals, so I could soothe my feet on the smooth floor. I stood, my back to a pillar, my eyes closed, breathing slowly.
Once I’d revived a little, I tucked my sandals behind the pillar. I did not intend to put them back on whilst I was in the library itself, nor did I wish to be juggling them with an armful of books.
People sometimes give me odd looks when I walk around barefoot in public. And, yes, slightly shamefaced, I will admit to occasionally doing it on purpose, just to see how many odd looks I can garner in a given amount of time. But mostly, I do it because I enjoy the feel of the world under my feet. The feel of rough tarmac, or stone worn smooth by centuries of foot traffic, or the endless wear of the sun, wind and rain. Or perhaps the feel of grass. Cool or warm, prickly or soft, dewy damp or crackling dry.
As I pushed through the dark, heavy wooden doors, and entered the library proper, my feet felt the change from cool marble to warm flagstones, and my nose twitched with the heavenly smell that greeted me.
Books.
The smell of thousands upon thousands of books, ancient and modern. The bindings, the glue, the paper, the ink. The absorbed and slowly-released odours of the places they had lain before finally coming here, to this vast and beautiful hall of words.
In the centre of this sacred place, there were row upon row of shelves, all crammed tightly with the stuff of my addiction. Around the walls there were black-painted iron bars, twisted into phantasmagorical shapes, guarding balconies groaning with more shelves. And in nooks and crannies, around corners, in small, secretive alcoves, more and yet more of the stuff of wonder. The still air was thick and heavy with almost-silence, muffled by the millions of pages contained between the covers. High, high overhead, the sunlight streamed down through thick, rippled, dusty glass, heating the air to a lazy temperature, motes dancing and swirling in the golden deluge. Stuffy, heavy and hot, the air in that cavern quickly pacified me to wandering in a daze through the stacks – causing me to drift along shelves and around corners, deeper and deeper into the heart of the library. Not really looking at the books I passed, merely trailing my fingers along their spines, feeling the texture shiver through my fingertips as I lightly brushed each binding.
Eventually, I drifted to a stop in a dead end. Even this did not bring me out of my reverie, merely caused me to halt by one shelf, and begin to stroke the bindings a little more slowly, feeling the substance of each one with more concentration than before.
Slowly, slowly, my fingers came to rest upon one in particular.
The binding was old, of soft leather. What was inside, I couldn’t tell, since whatever lettering that had been on there had been worn away by time and the caresses of countless hands.
But it felt...good. Special... Intriguing. My fingers tingled, just a little.
So I picked it out from amongst its fellows and, opening it randomly, began to read. The stories it contained – for it was a story book – were...absorbing. Strange tales full of even stranger creatures. And the lustful things they did were even stranger. Beguiling. Absorbing. Bewitching.
As I stood in that isolated alcove, in that vast library, reading, the air seemed to grow hotter with the tales. The doings of the people and creatures made me shiver with delight and ... yes ... desire. Soon, the occasional pleasant tickle of a bead of sweat slowly making its way down a curve or plane of my body was joined by another. As a slow heat built up inside me, I felt a tiny trickle adorn the topmost part of my inner thigh. I shivered again, plunging deeper into the story.

A voice at my ear breathed, “Hello.”

My body stiffened, and the book fell from my nerveless grasp , landing open on the floor. Though the air in the library was perfectly still, the pages riffled and turned, and then were still. My startlement instantly turned to readiness. For what, I was not certain. I had heard no-one approach. Yet here was a voice, whispering a greeting. So close that I could feel the hot breath that made the voice tickling my ear, and brushing the fine and delicate hairs on my neck and shoulder.
I did not turn around. Not yet.
Now I was more alert to my surroundings, I could clearly feel the presence behind me. My back fairly sizzled with the sense of another body, standing closer to me than any person had a right to do. I could feel the heat of him, far more than the hot, lazy air around me. His was a sharp, dry heat that burned through the thin cotton fabric of my summer dress, bathing me in...what? I was not sure, but unwillingly admitted to myself that it felt good. The owner of the voice spoke again. Softly. Oh, so softly. In a voice half way between a whisper and a sigh, and with a hint of amusement, he said, “Well, then. Will you turn around? You called me, after all.”
“C...called...?” I stammered. Swallowing, I tried again, my voice quavering, just a little. “I...I called no-one. I was...reading.”
I sensed amusement from behind me. The soft, seductive voice spoke again. “Indeed you were. And enjoying the story too, were you not?”
“...I...er...I...” I faltered, and then stopped, blushing deeply. The voice chuckled.
I felt a finger trace its way slowly down my spine, from the nape of my neck to the top of my buttocks. I shivered, and felt a twitch, deep in my body.
“Will you not turn around?” The voice asked again, with a very evident smile. “Please?” he added, more softly still.
I took a deep, slightly quivering breath. Slowly, slowly, I acceded to the request.
Standing behind me was a figure. Apparently that of a man, but subtly, unmistakeably not. Everything about him was very, very slightly different. Perfectly proportioned, but elongated. On a busy street, in normal clothing, he would be easy to miss. Apart from the eyes.
It would be hard to miss the eyes.
Deep, deep blue, almost violet, they burned from his nut-brown face like beacons, drawing me in, absorbing. Possessing.
I looked away, as I felt myself being pulled closer, taking an involuntary step back as I did so. This allowed me to see the rest of him. His well-shaped arms and chest. His waist...his hips...his... I gasped and raised my eyes back to his chest, concentrating on the lines and whorls tattooed all over him. The lines themselves were almost as absorbing as his eyes, which I dared not look at again. Not until I had steeled myself to do so. Deep within my body, I began to tremble.
Though my gaze was centred squarely on his chest, watching the lines there subtly shifting with each breath he took, I could still see the corners of his mouth curl up, just a little more.
“Are you afraid, little reader?” he asked.
I shook my head, and immediately gave lie to that as he took a slow step towards me, and I took another involuntary step back.
He seemed amused by this, the smile growing a little wider as he stepped forward again, causing me to step back. I squeaked in surprise, as my back hit the wall at the end of the alcove. My breathing became a little heavier as I realised I had nowhere else to go in this narrow gully between the bookshelves.
I watched him take another step closer, until he was standing almost as close to me as he had been before. I sensed movement to one side, and my eyes darted to it, to watch his hand come slowly up, rising towards my face. As he ran a finger along my jaw to the point of my chin, he whispered, “Please don’t be afraid of me, little reader. I only wish to see the eyes that took such pleasure from my story, and to bring more pleasure to them, if I can... Will you let me look into those eyes again, as I did from the pages?”
As he said this, I felt the tip of his finger put the gentlest of pressure under the point of my chin, as he encouraged me to lift my head.
Slowly, slowly, my eyes travelled up his chest, over his throat and chin, past his still slightly smiling lips, past his nose, until they eventually came to rest where he wished them to. Just for a moment, my heavy breath stilled, as his eyes held me, still and quiet, in their thrall.
Then, he moved his head.
Closer. Closer still. With infinite care and tenderness, his lips, feather light and as soft, brushed mine. Slightly parted, I tasted his sweet, sweet breath, and I was lost. And he knew it.
Carefully, gently, he took my face between his hands, and kissed me a little deeper, his lips parting a little more, the tip of his tongue sliding between my lips. It was as soft and sweet as his breath. Tasting the deliciousness of it, I immediately wanted more. Raising my hands to place them either side of his neck, I kissed him back, more deeply than before. Soon, he released my face to run his hands down either side of my body, his thumbs gently brushing the sides of my breasts as they passed by, causing deeper shivering, and my body to tremble more than it had before.
As lust began to course through me, his hands glided over my hips to come to rest on the swell of my buttocks, squeezing gently. He pulled my hips closer to him, and I could feel the lust coursing through him, too, as he pressed my body between his and the wall. I moaned into our kiss as my insides turned to water and I felt the incoming tide of need rushing through my body as a hurricane began to build deep inside my soul.
Pulling his head back very slightly, he gently sucked my lower lip then, releasing it with a graze of teeth, he kissed his way along my jaw line to my neck, and began, with infinite care, to kiss and nibble his way down towards my collarbone. Still caressing the back of his head, my fingers buried in his hair, I moaned again, a little louder, as he nibbled the skin just below my collarbone, just above the neckline of my dress. Moving his hands there, he began to unbutton the front as he kissed and nibbled the hollow of my throat. My head thrown back against the wall, my breathing became heavier, tiny noises of lust and need escaping my lips as he undid the last buttons on my dress, sliding his hands around my waist. My skin burned where he touched me, the sheen of sweat doing nothing to dampen his fire.
He kissed his way down between my breasts, then lifted his lips from my skin to trail the very tip of his tongue across my salty skin, to take one of my aching nipples into that sweet mouth of his. Moaning louder still, I arched my back as he took that nipple between his teeth and gave it the gentlest of tugs, his tongue flickering over the end, raising such fire in my belly as I had never known was there. His hands slid up from my waist to cup my breasts gently as, with teeth and tongue and lips, he mercilessly teased first one nipple, then the other, until it felt like my whole being was drawn into those small parts of my quivering body.
Struggling for breath now, I whispered, “...please...please...I need...”
I broke off with a gasp as he trailed his tongue over my breast, back up towards my neck, and bit a little harder than before. Hard enough to release the sensations from my nipples and send them rushing back through my body. Pressing me back against the wall again, more firmly this time, he caressed my thigh as he drew it up towards his waist. Eagerly, I wrapped my arms around his neck, and my thigh around his hips as he effortlessly lifted me up and I wrapped the other leg tightly around him.
There was a breathless pause, as the tip of his desire rested against the pulsating centre of mine, and then slowly, slowly, he slid all the way inside me, filling me completely with his heat and his passion.
My gasps and moans grew louder still, and more frequent as he slowly slid in and out of me, alternately kissing my neck, and sinking his teeth into it. His fingertips dug into my buttocks as mine dug into his back and shoulders. The tempo of his movement increased, his thrusting hips grinding me against the wall harder and harder, my legs gripping his waist with the fervour of a woman possessed. Pressed tight to the wall by his passion and heat as I was, I still moved with him, snaking and heaving my hips in time with his. The hurricane in my soul was building ever stronger, spinning ever faster, my back arching, the storm-driven waves of passion mounting higher and higher until, breathtakingly, they broke over my head, and I sobbed and screamed my release. A moment later his voice, which had been silent all this time, joined mine, our voices meshing and melding and spinning through that ancient and cavernous space until the very roof shook with the sound of our joining.

When I came to, lying curled on the warm flagstones of the library floor, the sun was no longer streaming through the windows – the light outside had taken on a curious greenish cast and I heard, even through the thick walls of the library, a long, low growl of thunder. Dazed and confused, I sat up, looking around me in the dimmer light of the clouded late afternoon. I was alone and, for a moment, considered that I may have fainted in the heat, and dreamed a fever dream. Then my eyes fell on the book, lying where I had dropped it.
Its cover was very firmly closed.
As I became more aware of my body, I realised I was also pleasantly sore, and, looking down, noticed little red crescents on my skin, their rouge mostly faded, but obvious to me, at least.
I stood up carefully, testing my limbs against the pull of the earth. They were a little shaky, but held me well enough as I stood, then bent down and picked up the book. As I held it in my hands, I felt a slight tingle from the binding, but it was soon gone. I heaved a sigh of satisfaction and loss, whilst a bittersweet smile tugged the corners of my still-tingling lips. Hesitating, I clutched that book to my breasts, just for a moment, and then replaced it on the shelf. Perhaps I would find it again, some day. Or, perhaps, some other lucky soul would trail her fingertips across the binding, feel its unique call, and release the ink devil.
Another low, rumbling growl shook the air, louder this time, drawing a broad smile from my lips. Hurriedly, I twisted and turned my way through the labyrinthine heart of the library. I stopped for a moment, to retrieve my sandals from behind the pillar, and they dangled from my hand as I ran from the portico into the first fat drops of the storm.
The drops quickly became a downpour, and I danced and sang amid the storm’s blessings, washing my skin in its cool, magical bliss.

.

new bike (as yet, nameless)

2010-04-24T14:34:00.000+01:00

dear reader, it hath arrived! the new bike is in da house, and poor Trob is no more. :o(

when i put the deposit on the newbie, there were one or two things that needed attending to. it needed a new passenger footpeg, chain and sprocket (one of my favourite words, by the way!), new handlebar grips, and new throttle cables. i was supposed to pick it up the following saturday, but the new throttle cables proved to be a bit of a problem. according to John (of John Carr Motorcycles of Somercotes, Derbyshire the place the newbie came from), the cables would normally be on the shelf at his supplier.
however, continuing our pattern of luck with vehicles, they were not.
saturday came around, no bike. he said probably monay, maaaaybe tuesday. so i waited, and twitched a little.
monday? no. "We got a big box of kawasaki parts, but no cables." (thanks, john - really needed to know that...*more twitching*) "don't worry though - they'll be here soon."
okaaaay.... tuesday? still no.
and they were shut on wednesday.
tuesday was a fairly despondent day. i (like the rest of the world) really, really hate waiting for stuff, and by now i was reconciled to saying goodby to Trob, looking forward to the new experience of (for the first time ever, dear reader) using a vehicle that was less than ten years old(!) i was excited, dammit! i may, though, not have been quite so despondent if some kind friend (and you know who you are! *gives said friend a stern look*) had not mentioned the fact that the parts may have to be flown in from somewhere, and the ash cloud was still dancing in the skies above us, grounding all of the air traffic.
(btw - check out these beautiful pictures of the volcano and the Aurora Borealis! ^_^)
and so to thursday. i had, by now, resigned myself to the thought that it may indeed be the ash cloud that was causing the delay, and i may have to wait days, or even weeks, for the Icelandic Volcano Gods to settle down again. i was dealing with it. i had also, optimistically and just in case, booked thursday afternoon off. i fully intended to take it, too. (i reasoned that if the cables still hadn't arrived, then at least i could pin down a short story that had blossomed in my brain in the middle of the night. and, in my best Kirsty Wark voice, more on that later....)
i called the bike shop at about half past ten, with everything crossed. "Oh, hi! yeah - it's on the bench now - be ready in a couple of hours"

happy. dance.

in joy i went home, to wait for the call to say i could go pick up my new toy. i actually got sick of waiting for the call and rang up at about half past three to be told it had been ready for an hour. didn't care. i had used my waiting time well, and had managed to pin down the first half of the story. this made me happy. and now i could finally, finally pick up my new bike.
i could tell you in detail about the experience. the heat and sweat in my bike gear, the excitement, the lengthy process of transferring ownership of two vehicles at once (hampered by at least half a dozen phonecalls). the bittersweet moment when i finally said goodbye to my faithful old warhorse of a Kawasaki GT750. (proud of myself that i managed not to cry, by the way).
but i suspect it would be of very little interest to anyone other than myself. so i won't bore you. instead, i will show you some pictures:

practically my last view of my dear old Trob. holding back the tears.

(btw, the dent on the tank happened in the first year i had her - tried to set off with the chain lock still attached to the back wheel. promptly fell over, and only a concrete post saved me from the deadly shame of being unable to pick her up by myself.)

shiny new toy!

...mmm...shiiiiny......

weird angle, rrreeeeally pretty disc brakes....

shiny FTW!!! (hubby has very sternly informed me that i may wish to keep her this way...)

so i took her for a little inaugral jaunt around a few local country lanes. just to get used to the ride, you understand... ;o)

the difference was astounding. riding Trob, i now realise, was like sitting in an old, battered armchair that has moulded to the shape of one's body. comfortable, solid, stable. maaaaybe a little creaky. but familliar and beloved.
the new bike is a different beast entirely. it was like moving from an armchair to a bar stool. the centre of balance is higher, thus feels a little precarious for the first ride or two. but then - oooohhhh, but then.

my, my, dear reader. i may not be in love, but i've certainly got that glow. the ride position is totally different. from being slouched comfortably and cruising along (...um...apart from doing the odd ton down the A38 when i feel the need for speed...*ahem*), i have gone to being forced to actively adopt a racing position - leant forward over the tank (sometimes feeling like i've got my nose practically over the front wheel!), legs bent in a ready-to-spring almost-crouch, and, yes, a bit of a daft grin. the throttle is so responsive! the breaks are so sharp! (*makes mental note* will have to watch out for that...). and the movement. this bike, i kid you not, moves like a dancer. the balance, the poise... oh, bliss! it makes me want to weave from side to side on straight roads. i crave bends and potholes, just for the chance to weave my sinuous way around them! actually, with this being far more of a sports bike than a cruiser, i have to go around the potholes. the seat and suspension are sooo firm!!! boy oh boy, is my arse going to be sore for a while!
but i care not. New Bike is happymaking. ^_^

-

just a quick word about the new story. it's called Ink Devil, and it's set in a library. as i said, i got the first half pinned down on Thursday, the rest of it came through yesterday. and it's a bit...um...well, let's put it this way: i love it, but i may have to wait until the blushes die down before i post it....

.

warm rock (and a video!)

2010-04-18T22:34:00.004+01:00

so i was going to say that anyone who's been on twitter in the last few days will have noticed my unusual taciturnity and general miserable grumpiness when i was on. but why would you, right? *blushes at own presumption* but for anyone who was worried (bless you!) the tide of hormones has now retreated and i'm much more my usual chirpily irritating self. ;o)
so friday it was on the retreat, and i managed to drag my lazy arse out of the house to go climbing at Alter-Rock with hubby. this was, frankly, a pathetic session. i barely lasted two hours, climbed nothing above a 5+, and my hands weren't even sore when we came away. bloody hell, my forearms were, though! (twanging tendons!). headed to a pub in derby afterwards for dinner with some colleagues (remember the night out i forgot to go to? this was the rematch). my mood took a total nosedive on the way there, though, as i had learned that my shiny new bike wouldn't be ready to pick up until maaaaybe monday, but probably tuesday, and various other little things had all crashed down at once. however, once i got to the pub (i was early), liberal application of vodka, O...Saya by A R Rahman (from the soundtrack to Slumdog Millionaire), half an hour to myself, and sunshine had an astonishingly positive effect. had a great night - even if it was two months late. ;o)
yesterday, the weather was beeeautiful, and hubby, astonishingly, managed to persuade me to go climbing outside for the first time in probably six months. look, i am a*total* wuss when it comes to the cold. i hate being out in it, and i hate climbing in it with a passion. but i was persuaded that we should go here:

Harborough Rocks

it's a beautiful limestone outcrop near Wirksworth in Derbyshire. it's very popular with climbers, and is particularly good for practicing trad climbing techniques, since the faces aren't huge, the terrain is friendly and easily accessible, and it's a particular kind of limestone that's pocked with lots of holes and pockets - easy handholds on lots of the routes. it's used by a lot of groups - scouts, guides, etc. there was a group there from Stafford yesterday.

it was so lovely. the sun was warm, the breeze wasn't too cold, and the outcrop faces south, so it gets the sun virtually all day. gods - i have missed the feel of warm rock far more than i realised. maybe we should move to Spain?...

we took all of the gear to climb trad, but ended up soloing instead (climbing without safety equipment - just shoes and a chalkbag). it was great for me. i have virtually no confidence left after not climbing outside for so long, so i took baby steps soloing the easier routes with lots of juggy (big, easy-to-grip) holds, whilst hubby did the harder stuff. the only trouble with Harborough is that it's so popular (also, people have been climbing there since the 1800's), many of the holds have been polished to glassy smoothness. friction? what's that? had to be sooo careful!

and as we were soloing, we could please ourselves what we did. so when i decided that i'd had enough, i just lay in the sun, or wrote a little more of my book, or wandered around on the hillside enjoying the gorgeous day.

i also spent some time admiring the perfectly blue sky - not a thing in it except for the local corvids (thank you, unpronounceable Icelandic volcano). utter, utter bliss! i even caught the sun across my cheekbones and the bridge of my nose! not quite enough to bring my freckles out, though - not quite yet.

but getting there... ^_^

spring, new life and shooting stuff

2010-04-13T20:19:00.000+01:00

good afternoon, dear reader.

wait...afternoon?...surely that can't be right?...isn't it tuesday?...

well, yes it is. but i'm on holiday, so ner.

weeellll...i say holiday, but really it's just leave. can't really go on holiday, since poor Isobel is STILL in the paint shop! *grumblegrumblegrumble*.

oh, look - never mind that now - i'm in a bit of a fragile mood today (yup - hormones strike again - expect a four AM post any day now...), and very likely to get cross or burst into tears at the drop of a mouse, so i will stick to the happy stuff, shall i? my keyboard is, after all, not waterproof.

soooo...happy stuff.

well, spring is here. definitely, this time. thank the gods. the wind is still chilly, but the flowers are coming out, there's a haze of acid green over half of the deciduous trees, the rest are budding, and some even have blossom on them. *sighs with relief* sad bugger that i am, i was playing "Spring I-Spy" from the car on Sunday - vegetation (particularly of the flowering kind) only. here's some of what i saw:

blackthorn blossom
cherry blossom
broom in bloom
daffodils
big, fat magnolia buds
heather
tulips
budding and blooming willow trees (of various kinds)
acid green hawthorn leaves
gorse
flowering currant
laurel buds
almond blossom
dandelions
and, most excitingly for me - daisies. my favourite flower. i don't know what it is about these tiny, perfect little things, but i absolutely adore them. they gladden my heart every day. the common Day's Eye is a tiny little personification of bliss for me. each and every one of them, no matter where they are. i can't even make daisy chains, any more - haven't been able to for years, in fact. i just can't bear to see them wither. in fact i have, for about seven or eight years, worn a tiny little silver daisy on a hoop in my ear. it's kind of a part of me....

anyway - the reason i was playing Spring I-Spy in the car is because it was a beaitifully dry, sunny day, and we were off to visit my shiny new step-grandson.

yup, you heard right, dear reader. i am a grandma. at thirty-three years old. sheesh! thanks, guys - way to go! *headsmack*

i should, perhaps, explain. hubby is 11 years older than me, and his eldest son is 20. which, whilst it seems a ridiculously young and stupid age to me to have children...well...look - this is another of those things i'm not going to get into. rant-avoidance techniques activated.

but...oh, he's soooo sweet! look!...

This is Finley.

look, i know - all right? i tried to get them to spell it properly, but they wouldn't have it.... *eyeroll*

aaanyway - here we have three generations:

Stepson, Hubby, and Stepgrandson.

actually, to give him credit, stepson does seem utterly in love with the little 'un (as well as slightly zombified by lack of sleep - cue evil laughter and cries of "Revenge, at last!!!" from his parents... hee hee hee!). his girlfriend was just too tired to do or say anything much. she seemed to be coping ok, though...

and that was most of Sunday taken care of.

exciting, huh? wait till we get to Monday!!! (actually, you'll have to...)

teamaking intermission

actually, not a great deal happened on monday. well - not outwardly, anyway.

inwardly, i appear to have a novel growing... now how the bloody hell did that happen?! i asked for a short story, goddamnit!!! *sigh* actually, i'm not complaining. not really. i know i said not long ago that i was going to write short stories for a bit, and that was how this one started off, actually. but then it grew. and grew. and then it grew a bit more. it seems to be generic romantic fantasy-flavoured, but i don't really care. i like that stuff! and i'm not ashamed to admit it! *stands tall and proud* at the moment, in my head, it tastes a bit like one of my very favourite books, called "Spirit Fox". it's by...noooo...not Neil Gaiman, (for a change!) two ladies. one of whos name i can't remember. the other is Mickey Zucker Reichert. and i confess i only remember that lady's name because it's soooo...well...interesting. but i love this book. it's generic, yes. but it's a perfectly shining gem of a book, too - the story is beautifully told, and the romance is romantic without making me want to cringe/throw up (allllways a bonus!)

of course, mine won't be nearly up to that standard, but at least i have a high water mark to aim for. i'm beginning to think ouroburos was a fluke...

and, once i've got this one out of my system, maybe i can go for comedy? or horror? or both? yeah!!!

...ahem...sorry...quite excited... *blush*

and so to today.

today, we did archery, for the first time since...um...probably early october (gets a bit cold after that to be standing around twanging stuff). we were supposed to do climbing, but since i spent the first hour or so of today sobbing my eyes out for no good reason other than i was sad and hormonal and tired, hubby suggested we go shoot some arrows, or take a walk in the woods. between us, we couldn't make our minds up, so we decided to combine the two and shoot some arrows in the woods. a splendid idea, as it turned out. it's beautiful in Shining Cliff Woods. peaceful, spacious, and just lovely. and there's a little lake in the middle beside which we got handfasted.

our surroundings looked like this:

today we were up on the top of the shining cliffs themselves (and they really do sparkle in the sunlight, by the way - it's just magical to see), since it's nice and flat, and not too many people go up there. the arrows are real, and can really kill. i know, because not only did i kill the target, i killed a tree - at least twice - and a rock. i'm not kidding - i took a chunk out of a rock with an arrow! 0.o

when hubby and i shoot arrows, we make it a competition. otherwise, what's the point? (other than the incredibly satisfying sound of a well-shot arrow going "thwap" or "thud" as it hits the butt, that is...)

so, the rules are:

1 point per ring, starting at 1 for the outer white ring, and 10 for the last gold ring, 15 for the bullseye.

six arrows per person per turn.

flip a coin for the choice of first or second to shoot on the first round, winner goes first thereafter.

first one to five wins the round

best of three rounds wins the match.

and, in pictures:

Robin Hubby

hubby searching for the first of today's lost arrows. we lost four in the end, but managed to retrieve two, so not tooo bad... :oS

Robina In Da (campervan) Hoody

the scores were:

5 -0 to me

5 - 3 to me

2 - 5 to hubby.

i won!!! *triumphant happydance* this has only happened once before. but best of all, my shooting was better and more consistent than when we started last summer.

here is my winning score:

check out the two together! *pride*

needless to say, i felt a little better after that.

oh, gods - what have i done?!

2010-04-10T17:54:00.000+01:00

good evening, dear reader.

it's been an interesting day...

you may remember some happy squeaking a while ago, from when we got a fabulous new shower. well, a couple of weeks ago, the shower broke, due to the fuse for the old shower not being adequate to serve the new shower. it got so hot, that it melted some of the fuse box, and welded itself in place. not a wonderful state of affairs, i must say. since then, we have been enduring tepid baths, since to have hot water, we need to turn the heating on, and the weather has been warm, so the bath not so much. today, we went to get a new fuse and box so we could once again get squeaky clean without shivering and feeling miserable. the place we had to go to obtain this specialist bit of kit is on an industrial estate in a nearby town.

so anyway... off we trotted to said electrical place and obtained said specialist bit of kit.

then i looked across the road.

over the road is a unit that has been turned into a bike shop. i have been wearing the same knackered leathers for years which are, though still perfectly sevicable, heavy, and uncomfortable in hot weather, and not all that waterproof. also - the jacket is made of at least half a cow and weighs a bloody ton. so over the road i trotted to see if they had anything that would A) replace what i have, and B) fit me. i have rather a womanly shape (small waist, big bum and hips), and trousers especially can be an absolute nightmare to fit in comfort.

so now i am the proud owner of some spanking new trousers and a jacket. manmade, waterproof, and weighing probably a quarter of my old gear.

HUZZAH!!!

but i had not finished. ho no!

see, not only did they sell gear, but also bikes. of course, since it's a bike shop... (well, duh!) and of course we had to have a good oggle at the bikes whilst we were there. and i saw one of these...

Kawasaki ZR-7

i am a huge fan of kawasaki. and i made the mistake of sitting on it.

oh, dear.

remember Trob? my faithful warhorse of a Kawasaki GT750, who has carried me with nary a complaint, and very little trouble, for seven years? of course you do. so do i - she's kinda hard to forget. soon, however, all i will have of her will be memories, and a couple of photographs.

i appear to have traded her in for a new bike...

and yes, of course i'm excited to think that soon, i will be riding this perky, sprightly young whipper-snapper. but at the moment, all i can do is look at Trob, think of how well she's served me over the years, and think, "oh, gods - what have i done...?"

an earthbound misfit

moving house

R.I.P. Alan

helpless in the face of a dying chicken

five bottles of shampoo

Fred and Ginger have *nothing* to worry about (except maybe getting knocked over...)

dammit, playwrights are stalking me!

your personal shopper...?

30 Day blog challenge: Day... aw hell, who cares...whatever...

30 Day blog challenge: Fail

30 Day blog challenge: Day 25 - Your day, in great detail

30 Day blog challenge: Day 24 — Whatever tickles your fancy

30 Day blog challenge: Day 23 — A recipe

30 Day blog challenge: Day 21 - a website & Day 22 - a YouTube video

30 Day blog challenge: Day 20 — A hobby of yours

30 Day blog challenge: Day 19 — A talent of yours

30 Day blog challenge: Day 18 - Whatever tickles your fancy.

30 Day blog challenge: Day 17 — An art piece (painting, drawing, sculpture, etc.)

30 Day blog challenge: Day 15 — A fanfic & Day 16 — A song that makes you cry (or nearly)

30 day blog challenge: Day 14 — A non-fictional book

30 day blog challenge: Day 13 — A fictional book

30 Day blog challenge: Day 12 - whatever tickles your fancy

30 day blog challenge: Day 11 — A photo of you taken recently

30 day blog challenge: Day 10 — A photo of you taken over ten years ago

30 day blog challenge: Day 09 — A photo you took

phone

30 Day blog challenge: Days 07 & 08 - cheating a little.

30 day blog challenge - day 06 - whatever tickles your fancy

30 day blog challenge: Day 05 — Your favourite quote

“People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.”

30 day blog challenge - day 04 - your favourite book

30 day blog challenge: Day 03 — Your favourite television programme

Day 02 — Your favorite movie

30 day blog challenge: day 01 — Your favorite song

challenge: a droubble of forgotten words

christmas and drabbles and droubbles

to challenge, or...oooh! shiny thing!

christmas and flash and drabbles.

NaNoWriMo again

NaNoWriMo

three stories and an introduction.

freezing to death in Norfolk, with added fungus.

about as intellectual as i get

what i did on my holidays

Inception

camper porn and other news

homecoming

Waterworks

*sings* "My name is Talulah..."

blogfest: advice for new writers

insomnia, storms, little brother and powerless.

Deathdream #11

procrastinating

Deathdream #10

Deathdream #9

Deathdream #8

Deathdream #7

Deathdream #6

Deathdream #5

SQUEEE!!!

Deathdream #4

blogging in the sunshine, and Minotaur

Deathdream #3

description of a storm

Deathdream #2

Deathdream #1

short story: Ink Devil

new bike (as yet, nameless)

warm rock (and a video!)

spring, new life and shooting stuff

oh, gods - what have i done?!

Fred and Ginger have nothing to worry about (except maybe getting knocked over...)

sings "My name is Talulah..."