"Bridal?" asks the receptionist.

"No thanks," replies the bride, "I'll just hang onto his shoulders".

Labels: Jokes

Astute observers of this blog may have noticed a slight delay over the long weekend with the publication of the second half of my gig review. I do apologise of course. The problem was reality creeping in to the mix. I think that that gap might have been the longest since I started my second attempt at regular posting. I've back filled to atone of course.

When gamboling first started it was self published with a tool I'd created myself. It was annoying and difficult to publish anything and so there were often huge gaps where nothing got published. The old site is still available over there on the left under "Older Archive".

Then after one long almost six month break I signed up for Blogger and tentatively started going again. Initially I did this on a seperate site but then I moved the blog back to it's rightful home. Finally at the begining of the year I moved up to seven days a week. By gradulally stepping up the pace it's just about been possible to keep up.

So what about the delay? Well weirdly the most difficult thing for me and writing are three day weekends. They almost always mean that something is happening on the weekend for a start (like I'm away or like this weekend when we had houseguests) and in May this year we've had three. I know everyone else has had two but I had to go away and climb a mountain remember. And all of that throws the whole delicate balance off track. Add to that the fact that the formula one season's been in full swing and so I'm posting pretty regularly over on SofaF1 and you'll see that I've been pretty stretched.

Do I mind? Well it annoys me whenever it happens. So it's fortunate that it doesn't happen too often. But on the other hand if I wasn't out in the world experiencing things then I wouldn't have anything new to write about. At least despite the 555 posts I've written in the last 3 and 3/4 years I haven't run out of inspiration. I'd be much more upset about that.

Labels: Articles

He worked for Special Branch.

Labels: Jokes

He stepped out into the rain and already his hat had begun to be soaked through. He turned back towards the door to lock it. While his hand was returning the key to his pocket it brushed against a packet of cigarettes. It was a difficult choice. He could light it here, but would it go soggy out in the rain. He had no choice, once his hand felt the pack he had to light one. The air was so damp the first two strikes of the match failed to take. He chuckled to himself as the third time lit true, with him it wasn't three strikes and out.

He turned back out into the rain and that's when he saw the cat. It was just sitting there staring back at him. A cat which probably would have looked cute sprawled on the grass in the sunshine, but tonight it looked back at him with those reflective eyes, it looked back at him and it seemed to know something. He wanted to just walk past it, but he froze just staring at it, staring at it staring at him.

The cat got off of his hind legs and started walking towards him. There was a fork in the path, the cat took it. Just as it was about to walk past on the other fork it turned and gave him one last look, and then it walked on.

He stepped forward and then stopped. Water actually sloshed off of his hat and onto his feet. He hadn't meant to stop, not in the rain. But he found that he was suddenly unsure of himself. This deal was too important to miss, if he didn't come through on the deal the consequences would be terrible. But somehow, something made him stop. Stop out there in the rain. He turned back, unlocked the door, and stepped back in. The cat had unnerved him.

Labels: Fiction, Short

[This is part 2 of the review, please check part 1 if you care about such things]

Well first can I say that the sound was terrible. It was impossible to hear either band properly. This possibly came from laziness on the part of the engineer. Mother Black Cap seemed, from what I could tell to be guitar led whereas the dukes were supposed to be vocalist led. I think that the engineer just decided to put everything on the same and loud and hope for the best. My mate Adrian could have done better but then he was a sound engineer.

Mother Black Cap

I'm not sure about the lead singer. There I've said it. His name is Glam, and on this gig Glam was looking decidedly less glam than when I'd last seen him. Although he did still have that stocking glove on so I suppose I can't complain too much. It was odd though because it does look like he's on a progression away from glam towards being a west coast surfer / new york geek rocker. And that's fine, he can look any way he pleases.

Although I did get a sense of a little Fountains of Wayne in one of the new songs so perhaps it is a genuine musical shift to match? I thought, at first that it might be the sound problems. His mike might have been a bit high for him. But I went back and listened to the tracks on their myspace page* (which is not very easy to read in FireFox but I'm sure most of the media world don't use the cool browser so it shouldn't be a problem for them in getting signed) and I found that you can hear that weakness in his voice on the tracks there as well. It's not fatal for him. He may need some more practice or crucially he may find himself more comfortable at singing a different kind of song.

On the subject of material I did actually quite like it. Quite a few songs you felt you knew where you were going even though the song was quite unfamiliar.

There is an sense of the grand about their style, especially in their finalé "The Dark One" (a part of which is included at the end of this section). It hinted at the overblown quality of Muse or Smashing Pumpkins. Perhaps the kind of fancy producer you need to get that sound would be able to correctly bury the lead singer's voice in the mix?

I'm sure I'm being too harsh. The songs were really interesting and the band seemed pretty tight although not as tight as the Dukes. But in the final analysis if it was between them and The Dukes, I'd pick Mother Black Cap every time.

---

Rick Witter and The Dukes

The Dukes kicked off with their current single the raw, "The Year of the Rat" and it was exactly at this moment that I thought the night took a turn for the worse. The sound was pretty awful, and although I could make out the tune I remembered from theirspace it didn't sound right. Rick was lost completely in the mix and was almost having to shout to overcompensate. The quieter songs were easier to listen to and I preferred them mainly because I could work out what was going on between the different instruments. But that's hardly their fault.

What can be laid at them is that the Dukes don't seem to have exactly settled on what you could refer to as a style. There seems to be about three different song writers I could identify. My personal favourite was what I imagine to be the style of Rob Wilson mainly because it had a bit of a guitar solo in it. They did grow on me as time went on, but somehow I didn't quite connect.

I do think they did fare worse under the sound engineer than Mother Black Cap did, and listening to their studio offerings does make their sound make more sense... and yet I still don't feel convinced by them as a band, and because of the inconsistency of the style I'm not sure they are either. I'm not sure they'll exist a year from now.



*I wanted to say theirspace. Do you think that would have worked?

Labels: Articles, Coincidental Gig, Reviews

There is a rule in journalism which is that if you’re going to get drunk while doing an interview then you better remember to take a tape recorder with you. This occurred to me as I sank a pint in the third pub I had been to yesterday. I wanted to write a review of the gig so I had two choices: stop drinking or try and record some of the gig for posterity. I, perhaps unsurprisingly, chose the latter and then hardly remembered to record anything. The only problem with the “more beer” plan was that I had almost run out of beer and there was no way, no way at all, to get any more. I had arrived early to secure a table outside, and had actually managed to do this but with no back up I couldn’t leave my table to go to the bar. All around me other patrons were circling. One moment somebody would put their beer down on the table and then from the other angle somebody would ask me, “is anyone using that chair”, then another beer would get plonked down. It was like I was being stalked by a pack of hungry hyenas, but with less laughing. To escape the horror of the situation I cast my mind back to how I had got here in the first place.

Normally when you decide to go to a gig there is some decision making process involved. There is usually a moment of, “oooh I really want to see them” or “yeah why not” about the whole thing. But for this gig there hadn’t been. It had all started when a friend of mine, Joe, had been over having a few beers. He was telling us this nice little story, another of our friends Zoë had called him up and said, “do you want to go to this gig with me, I’ll buy your ticket but you have to agree before I tell you who it is”. Joe being the agreeable kind of guy that he is had agreed, and it had turned out to be not as bad as he thought because it was actually to see Rick Witter and the Dukes (who? Well Rick Witter used to be front man in Shed Seven. Who? Well I probably can’t help you other than to say, reasonably successful Indie band from the nineties).

But there was something odd about this, my friend Adrian knows Rick Witter. And just as I was explaining this to Joe, Adrian called on the telephone, making it nice and doubly odd. I mentioned the fact that there was a gig and he said, “I am so there”. Actually he said some words like the words that he uses, but you get the idea. So in a way from that moment I was forced into it. I was going because two of my friends were going. Adrian and Joe had met before but I was the common factor. There was no escaping my destiny.

So a few days later, destiny fully playing its course I get a phone call from Scott. He’s got a new band (Mother Black Cap, I last reviewed him in Bugfly) and they are playing a gig coming up. “Excellent”, I think I better go and see them. But horror of horror’s the gig is on the same night. Just as I’m gearing up to tell him the sad and tragic news he says, “yeah it’s going to be really good because we’re going to be supporting Rick Witter you know from Shed Seven”. So now I must go. I have to go it’s written in the stars, the world is conspiring to get me to the Islington Academy on the 25th May.

I turn to Adrian (who was sitting to my left when the call from Scott came in - I am not figuratively turning to Adrian, I am turning to him in actualité) to tell him about the whole Scott thing when he says, “I’ve just been looking up Rick’s band ‘The Dukes’ and it’s got one of my mates in it”.
I challenge him at this point, “I thought you were mates with Rick”?
“Well,” says Adrian, “I know Rick, but I’m mates with Rob. He used to be in the band with me”.

So as I looked at my two millimetres of beer I thought “that, in a rather enormous nutshell, is how I got myself in this mess”. A new problem had been added into the mix with the table. Because the beer was now at a record low level people kept coming to try and clear my glass! I had to hold on to it – it was my only hope.

Suddenly a call from Nick trying to confirm where this third pub is (I’d been moving around trying to find one with an outside table). He tries to tell me that he’s just going to find somewhere for a bite to eat and that he’ll head over afterwards, but I tell him he’s not allowed to. He must come and rescue me. And to his credit he does.



A few minutes later we are happily seated outside a couple of pints between us, and our conversation turns to how although an outdoor table seemed like a good idea earlier it might now be getting a bit cold. But after all the effort I went through I’m not moving. We agree that stoically not moving is the order of the day. Which turns out to have been the right decision because just as Nick is heading to the bar who should he almost bump right into but a friend of his that he hadn’t seen for a year and a half? She had lost their phone all that time ago and so had lost Nick’s number and their new phone had come with a new number. They’d last seen each other when they both lived in Nottingham.

So now this is really quite weird. But I had to ask the question was I a) destined to see this gig or b) destined to get Nick in the right place to meet his old friend or c) this destiny thing doesn’t exist – get over it? Rich arrived and we had some more beer so it became a moot point.

About 5 minutes later Adrian arrives and points out the name of the pub. It’s called The York, and is right opposite the venue. York is where Adrian used to live, and was where he met Rick and Rob from The Dukes. It’s certainly time to leave and go to the gig…

[Click here for the concluding part]

Labels: Articles, Coincidental Gig, Reviews

[This is part 3 of the 4 part story Scorching. If you're interested in that kind of thing then you may want to check out parts one and two before you read this. Or of course you may not.]

Steven didn't know what to do. He turned around a few times hoping that by the time he turned back the guy would suddenly be alive. He decided to stop being silly and besides he was getting dizzy. So he stopped and looked properly. There didn't seem to be anything obviously wrong with him other than the obviously uncomfortable angle in which he was lying and the fact that his eyes had rolled back in his head. It looked to Steven's untrained eye like he'd had a heart attack. Well the sex had sounded pretty amazing. Just as he was trying to decide if that would be the way that he wanted to go he heard a noise on the stairs.

"Gloria, don't come in here a second."

The steps stopped coming for a second and then they started again. "Steven?"
She walked round the corner, saw what had happened and then fell on the floor. She looked back up at Steven from all fours. Steven suddenly realised she'd gone into a kind of attack style crouch.

"What," she snarled, "did you do to him"?

"Nothing. I was going to ask you the same question. He must have died just after you left the room."

"Oh," she said looking instantly more relaxed, "really"?

"Of course. Why would I want to kill him anyway? I don't even know who he is."

"Yes but maybe you thought you would have to kill him to sleep with me?"

"I don't think so. I'm sorry, you're lovely and everything but to kill for? Well possibly, but I'm not sure this guy was ever going to find out about us. That certainly wasn't my plan."

"What shall we do? Hide the body?"

"Why? We didn't do anything. We should just phone the police, explain what happened and everything will be fine. I promise."

"No we can't phone the police. We can't."

"But," said Steven, "if we just tell them the truth then nothing will go wrong, nobody did anything."

"No," she said, "I think I might have killed him."

"You can't have."

"No, I think I did."

"But you'll go to prison."

"I can't I can't."

"But I can't lie to the police."

"You have to, you must. I… I… I'll sleep with you if you will."

That was Steven's dilemma. He knew that she was the woman, out of all of the women that he'd ever met in his life that he most wanted to sleep with. She was the one. She was so beautiful. So young, fresh and pure - or at least she seemed that way. He thought to himself, I don't care if she she's killed somebody. Why should I care - he thought. And then he thought about himself, he thought about himself, and decided that this was certainly a risky situation.

[Will Steven sleep with her, or will he report her to the police? Let me know and I'll write it! Or at the very least tune in next Friday for the hopefully dramatic conclusion.]

Labels: Fiction, Long, Scorching

They both claim that they are better at using computers than the other. After a bit of an argument back and forth they start fighting which immediately gets God's attention. God decides to settle this once and for all and sets a really complicated series of tests for them both to complete. They start working away, making spreadsheets and powerpoint presentations and tons of really complicated programs are written. Suddenly out of nowhere a thunderbolt strikes and takes out the power on each computer. A tense few moments ensue where they both restart their computers. On the devils computer there are no files nothing left, but on Jesus's they are all there.

"No fair God, that's cheating, what did you do?" asks the Devil.

"I didn't do anything. It's just that Jesus saves".

Labels: Jokes

So from the 1st July there will be a smoking ban in public spaces in England which is going to be very good. I'm not a zealot when it comes to smoking but it can be quite annoying. Some of the best new restaurants around are pubs and you do have this weird mix situation where you're trying to eat and other people are trying to smoke.

I would love to hope that this move will be the final catalyst for people to give up smoking but I'm not sure about that.

Most people start smoking at school and there you have to go and hide behind the bikesheds with your mates. These groupings become the cool gangs and to get in you have to smoke. Right from that young age smoking is cool. And what are we creating now? Well we are creating a situation where people will have to go outside and huddle together with other members of their smokers gang. Where they are all cool.

All of us non smokers will be sitting smugly inside thinking how wonderfully healthy we are. But somewhere, maybe deep inside, we'll want to be part of that gang again. They're all in it together all smokers of Britain have all suddenly become a single gang where they get to automatically start conversations with strangers and shrug off their British reserve.

Ah the coversations with strangers thing. That's important. The most common pick up line has to be, "have you got a light". And that has now been denied. Women often accuse men of being stupid but listen to this men are already preparing for the smoking ban. A survey has found that young british men aren't wearing watches any more. The reason? So they can ask women the time. They can't ask for a light anymore because being a smoker might be bad so now men can use their watchless status to attract women. This trick has only become available due to the mobile phone's invention. Because if there are no attractive women around and you need to know the time you can just look at that.

Labels: Articles

And he's approached by a POW (Predatory Older Woman) who asks him if he'd like to go back to her place. After they are just getting comfortable in bed the woman asks the guy, "Would you be interested in a mother-daughter threesome".

The guy is surprised but instantly agrees.

"Great," says the woman and then calls out, "Mum he said yes!"

-- This joke is by Barry Cryer who I saw performing in I'm Sorry I haven't a Clue two weeks ago.

Labels: Jokes

Little dead pigeon lying on the ground,
Little dead pigeon while walking I have found,
I can't help feeling that we shouldn't be meeting,
Because even on a little pigeon there's some good eating,
So why are you left abandoned by a cat?
What can I say except cats are like that.
Barstards

Labels: Fiction, Short

So as I alluded to yesterday, I was up a mountain. This may have also made my spelling worse - it is very hard to get spell checkers up there - Katherine wouldn't come. And I was desperately short of battery supply on my phone so I didn't even have a chance to recheck myself! In the end I made it to the top and back - only my trousers didn't quite survive! Ripped to shreds by that harsh mountain rock. Anyway here's a picture of the peak:

Labels: Illustrated

[Only a short post today as I'm up a mountain and it's about to start hailing again]

On Flickr there has been a big hoo ha about a comment that got deleted. A photographer whose photos had been up on Flickr had had her pictures stolen by a graphics firm which had turned them into photos for sale in frames on tea towels etc. She was very upset and posted the details of the company. The company started receiving death threats and so on. It all got a bit out of hand and Flickr decided to pull the post.

The interesting thing to me is not the rights and wrong of removing the post - which seems to interest everyone else. But the interesting point here is one of copyright protection.

This story was brought to my attention on digg.com and basically everyone on there was sympathising with the photographer who had had their photos stolen. But the usual fare on digg is quite different usually there are vast acres of articles about how to circumvent copyright, about how copyright is evil and about how DRM must die.

What struck me was how do these things square together? People know injustice when they see it. They can see that it's wrong for an organisation to steel from this girl. But they don't see the same injustice when they steel from a record company. Is it because each time they are fighting for the little man? Or is it just cognitive disonance?

When people steal music you might well be stealing from the little people. Sure the studio execs are rich. Sure Bono and Robbie Williams don't need any more of our money. But what about the people who will be laid off? You are stealing from them aren't you? And who gave you the right to decide?

Anyway I just thought it showed the true feelings of the digg users more clearly than they might even know themselves. And also it suggests a better tack for educating people about why copyright theft is wrong. Perhaps the authorities should do that rather than simply going around accusing people of being thieves? Educate people until they feel guilty enough that the majority won't do it.

Labels: Articles

[This is part 2 of the 4 part story Scorching. If you haven't you may want to read part one first. I would usually include a link at this point but I'm sending this from a train somewhere in Sussex. Part 1 was published last Friday, you should be able to find it somewhere.]

Steven blinked his eyes open and closed, and open and then closed again. He couldn't tell the difference. It was really dark. Dark and quiet. It was so quiet that Steven could hear his eyelids opening and closing. Forget pins dropping it had to be really quiet before you could hear stuff like that.

Steven had been lying on his left arm for quite a while. First it had fallen asleep, then it had done that gentle tickleish pins and needles thing. About half an hour ago there had been massive amounts of shooting pain up and down it. And eventually that had stopped too. Now it just felt dead.

But through all of that time he hadn't dared move because, well Steven had not been alone in the room. Steven had been lying under the bed in which the woman he desired and the guy who currently seemed to be ringing her bell had been hard at it. He'd felt safe to move while they had been distracted but he had been right in the middle of rearranging himself when they had finished. After that they had just lain there cuddling quietly. But eventually they had got up and gone. Or rather that was the thing. Steven could have sworn that only she had left but he couldn't hear any breathing but his own. He decided to risk it. He moved his arm. Or rather he tried to but it wouldn't move. Steven rolled over, which isn't easy under a bed and then used his other arm to shake the dead one. Warm blood rushed back into his arm and the pain returned. It felt like there were little pieces of glass in his veins. As the pain rushed through him he asked himself the fundamental question, "was she worth it"? To which the answer was still yes. In fact she was more intriguing now than before.

From the moment that he'd woken that morning he had known today was the day. He'd risen, dressed and walked straight over to her villa. He'd knocked on the door and they'd started talking. She seemed interesting and interested. And so Steven had invited her out for breakfast. But she had given the perfect response. She'd invited him in for breakfast.

It was while they were toasting the bagels that this other guy had arrived. She had told him to hide which seemed promising to Steven. He had thought to himself as he was legging it up the stairs that she was only getting him to hide because she wanted to have sex with him.

So Steven had gone and hidden under the bed of what had seemed like the spare room. But of course that was the room they had decided to use.

His arm felt just about useable. He listened again. Still silence. He decided to risk it. He slid himself out from under the bed and stood up. He have a quick glance back to the bed just to be sure. And that's when he realised that there had been something else dead. The guy in the bed.

[Check back next Friday for part 3]

Labels: Fiction, Long, Scorching

She's a dark horse isn't she

-- This joke is by one of the nations current premier jokesmiths Tim Vine who is great and I saw on Sunday last.

Labels: Jokes

So Tony Blair has finally announced he's standing down as Prime Minister. There will be a lot of people who will be pleased by this news and a few who will be mourning. The main fault that Blair made was a failure to manage expectations. He wanted, no he needed the landslide back in 1997. And while part of that was the utter collapse of the Tories, part of it was the vision of him sweeping in and changing things. Weirdly, for an often quite conservative country, the charge that people seem to be levelling at him is that he didn't change enough. Well that and Iraq, Iraq will hang round his neck for many a year.

In Blair's farewell speech he said that he had been privileged to run the greatest nation in the world. My first thought when he said that was, "what? America?" It's not that I don't think that Briton is great, it's simply that normally Americans say things like that and the British don't. If Blair had meant that it would make a lot of sense too. I wish he had said something like this, but I know he couldn't - and might not even believe it: "Remember back when Bill Clinton was in charge of America? Well back then I used to have time to do all kinds of stuff for Britain domestically. But since America in their infinite wisdom elected Num-Nutts over there I've spent half my time hiding the 'Red Button' from George in meetings. I'd love to say I had time for the NHS, but just imagine how bad the world would have been if I hadn't stopped Bush as much as I did. You can thank me for it later." That would have been probably the only thing that could have saved his reputation nationally.

But as I say the main problem is expectation. In fact a lot of the problems come from the D:Ream song "Things can only get better". That should have been seen as a sign, ie., "We're not really going to do much, but we can't do as badly as our predecessor" but apparently people didn't hear the song in that way. As it says on the Peter Cunah (the song's composer's) wikipedia page: 'Famously, however, "Things Can Only Get Better" was to enjoy a further life, this time as a political anthem, which would lead New Labour's 1997 election landslide.' Yes it was D:Ream wot won it!

Anyway here's this from Don't Watch That, Watch This:

Labels: Articles

Sister-matic

Labels: Jokes

Brian was rolling the hair between his fore and index fingers. To an outside observer it may have looked like he was doing this casually. But this was not the case. Brian's life had been ruined by this hair and so it was with great care and attention that Brian examined it.

The hair was long and blonde or rather it had been blonde when it was last attached to Sandra's head. Blonde hair on its own hardly ever looks really blonde it looks like you would think gray hair should look. Or at least it does until you see a gray hair.

Brian had seen his very own first gray hair just six weeks ago. Jennifer had pointed it out to him and had made some kind of joke about it. She'd called him an old man and so on. Brian had laughed along but then while driving to work the next morning he realised that he needed to change his life. He decided that he didn't want to become old he wanted to stay young. It wasn't like he consciously made a decision to trade Jennifer in for a younger model. No it wasn't like that. He had just happened to bump in to Sandra at the coffee machine. Sandra and Brian had flirted like they usually had but this time Brian hadn't stopped as early as he usually would.

They hadn't had sex on the photocopier or anything seedy, much to Brian's disappointment, but they had started meeting for lunch. And then they had started telling their colleagues that they were "going to the gym". It was the perfect cover.

Or it had been. Brian had been greedy though. He had tried to keep Jennifer in the dark. He didn't want to commit to Sandra so he kind of hadn't bothered telling Jennifer about Sandra just in case it didn't work out.

It had worked well until the hair. The hair that got into his underpants. The hair that Jennifer had found. The hair that was definitely not Jennifer's. The hair that Brian was rolling around in his fingers. The hair that he now allowed to drop to the floor. Brian thought as he watched it fall, that the stress of what was about to happen to him would probably mean more gray hair.

Labels: Fiction, Short

From a sign in Crystal Palace.

Labels: Illustrated

So the snails are back. They all seem to come back whenever there's a sudden rainstorm. There they all are wondering all over the pavements. And just when you're not looking, "crack", another one bites the dust.

You might say good riddence, but the snail isn't so keen on being stomped out of existance. But what can snails do about this? They have only one choice... they must evolve.

The big question for the modern snail is what to evolve in to. The most obvious thing would be to turn your shell red or orange. Something with some high visibility for humans. But sadly there is something more deadly to snails than humans (so much for our much vaunted "top predator" status - not even snails are that sacred of us). The snails top predator is a bird and birds main problem is that they can't see snails very well. So almost anything the snails do to make them more visible to humans will likely make them more visible to birds and that, from the snails point of view, would be a bad thing.

So what options do they have. Well my guess is that red is a pretty good colour for this situation. It would be nice and obvious for humans and while the birds might see it more it might also be that birds think that the snails are poisoned and so won't try it. It's a solution certainly but I don't think it will work in the long run. Soon enough the birds will learn that despite the red colour snails aren't poisonous. They could try and become poisonous but that sounds quite hard.

The long term solution was sitting right there on their backs the whole time. What the snails need to do is turn their shells into a kind of stealth bomber technology. A lot of birds and bats who eat snails use a thing like radar to find their pray, so the obvious solution to me seems to be to use this reliance on radar against them. The combination of red colour for humans, radar for bats and okay a little poison wouldn't be such a bad idea - and would certainly stop people getting too many ideas with the garlic butter - all of this will save the snail. Gosh it sounds like it's going to be busy, it better get on with it!

All of this reminds me of a joke:

What did the slug say to the snail?

Big Issue sir?

Labels: Articles, Jokes

Steven lay on a slab of boiling hot concrete. He was wearing only his shorts and a damp towel on his forehead. He had never thought that he would have picked the concrete to lay on but the deck chair was made of plastic and it had started to feel like it was melting. He didn't mind sun burn but he didn't want plastic burn.

He moved his hand to the side and found without looking his beer. It was floating in a bucket of ice. He pulled the stopper out and then took a pull of the beer. It felt cold along the length of his body for a few glorious seconds. And then he put the stopper back and gently dropped the bottle back into the bucket.

They'd all taken the piss out of him when he'd first suggested the stopper. But now they were all doing it. It was the only way to keep the beer afloat in the bucket of ice. They'd all been coming here for years. In fact they'd never even been able to use a bucket of ice because the bottles would so easily turn over once open. But Steven had changed all of that.

Life had changed for them all since Steven had blown in. For Steven it was a change from life back in dreary old England. For everyone else it was a reminder that they had all come out to Spain to finally enjoy their lives and not just to die. Steven drank more than everyone else, had more sex than everyone else and caught more sun than everyone else. But more than anything else he thought more than anyone else and that was what had made him a sudden celebrity. And truth be told what had got him the sex.

But despite outward appearance the contrary Steven was not satisfied. Steven was hungry for more. Steven had a single secret in his life. A secret that he never told anyone. Steven had never, in his whole life, ever been satisfied. And that was the thing that made him want more than everyone else. And when he saw something, like he had seen her across the bar the night before nothing would stand in his way. Nothing.

He would have to have her.

[This is part one of a 4 part series, part 2 will be next Friday.]

Labels: Fiction, Long, Scorching

...walks into a bra

Labels: Jokes

So my last post on temperature clearly created a bit of a buzz. Literally one phone call came flooding in from my father on the weekend. He’d been talking with a friend about the scale and this friend had pointed out a very good point. He explained that he understood what was happening at 0 and 100 degrees. But what about in the middle, was 50 degrees hot or cold or average?

Actually 50 degrees would be 18.9 degrees Celsius, which would be a bit cool. The average / recommended office temperature is 22 degrees Celsius. So it has been suggested, and now ratified by the committee that we move 50 degrees to be equivalent to 22 degrees. This moves 100 degrees Andronov to be equivalent to 111 Fahrenheit which is also reasonably easy to remember.

The good thing about this is that 100 degrees Andronov really means boiling day now. 111 Fahrenheit is really really hot, 0 is a Freezing Day by definition – there is frost on the ground. But most importantly 50 is comfortable. Anything warmer than 50 is warm, anything less than 50 is cool.

Here’s the handy table again with the new definition. And the conversion rate to Andronov from Celsius: A = C * 2.27272727

	K	C	F	A
Absolute Zero	0.0	-273.2	-459.7	-620.8
Freezing	273.2	0.0	32.0	0.0
Normal Temperature	295.2	22.0	71.6	50.0
Body Temperature	310.2	37.0	98.6	84.1
100 F	310.9	37.8	100.0	85.9
Boiling Day	317.2	44.0	111.2	100.0
Boiling Water	373.2	100.0	212.0	227.3

Labels: Andronov Scale, Articles

A roaming catholic

Labels: Jokes

It's late. The clattering train. The chattering passengers. The tired faces. The drunken tramp - who smells. The lovers - who should get a room. The bored student listening to his music and leering at the women. And me watching them all. Happy and entertained by them. And always unaware of how they all see me.

Labels: Fiction, Short

(It's not a painting, it's not a photograph. So what is it? Is it an electronic drawing? Well it was created in Photoshop).

Labels: Illustrated

During a conversation with my good friend Kris he mentioned that he believes that plot isn't that important to a good film. I think he may be on to something not just in regards to film but also to storytelling in general.

One of the easiest mistakes to fall into when constructing a story is to focus on the answer to the perceived important question, "what happens"?

The most important thing, I think, that happens in a story is that your protagonist changes or fails to change.

This leads to the two most common failures in all fiction. It leads authors to believe that things need to happen to their protagonist which can make their main characters incredibly passive. And also it can lead authors to believe the plot is more important than the emotion. Which can lead readers to think, "cool but why do I care"?

For what it's worth, and I'm sure I don't do this correctly at all. I think of the emotion first. My storys always come to me in this order:

1. Boy or Girl

2. Emotion (Eg. angry, happy, sad, confused)

3. Why? (high level version. Eg. Betrayal, love, money, something physical, something verbal)

4. Do I start with this or end with this?

And when I've got all of that in my head I start writing the character and the plot that it takes to get me to or from that place. Generally the single day short stories start with the emotion and explore that emotional moment. And the multi part short stories end with the moment of intensity.

But I tend to do all of this before I have even thought of who the character is. Before I've thought of the setting and so on.

I do think that this may well be the kind of thing that proves difficult for me when I write longer pieces. When I tackle something longer I tend to focus on the setting or plot idea because that's throughout. But I think that the short story grounding is probably right the character development is all. It just has to be more complicated character development if the book is longer. To an extent plot is the joke you give away which makes your book less interesting a second time round. Whereas character is the thing that keeps people coming back because there's always something new to learn and always something new to empathise with as your own condition changes.

The more important your plot is to your story the less lasting your story can be. The character development is the thing. Plot is basically irrelevant.

Labels: Articles

[This is part 4 of the 4 part short story Rooting Around, you may want to read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 if you haven't already]

Somehow Sean had expected something to happen from just touching the box. Like it would innately be able to read his desire and take him where he wanted to go to. In fact nothing had happened when he had touched the corner of the box other than he'd realised that the box was made of cardboard rather than wood as it had seemed in the half light of the attic.

He saw that some tape was holding down the flaps on the top of the box, and he started to pull it back towards him. His knees felt very uncomfortable in this position so he sat back down to help him, but kept - very slowly - pulling the tape towards him. Sitting back down made some of the blood rush back to his head. With this he realised that actually he was quite drunk. Was he ready to meet his previous self and explain to him how he should change his life?

And maybe it wasn't such a good idea anyway? Suddenly Sean wasn't so sure he wanted to go through with it. He would have to stop being himself to win Jen, and he wasn't sure that he was totally ready to do that. Sean quite liked being Sean, he wasn't sure he didn't like being Sean more than he liked Jen at this point.

And anway, surely he didn't have to travel through time immediately. That's one of the beauties of time travel, you've always got a chance to do it again if it didn't work out the first time. Maybe he'd have a coffee first and sober up? And maybe a shower wouldn't be the worst of ideas?

The only downside to this plan was the exit to the attic. The arrangement of the attic was such that the light switch was not within reach of the ladder. But, he thought, he'd be back up here in a little bit, maybe he'd just leave the light on when he went down this time.

As he stepped down the ladder the full force of daylight re-entered his eyes. And he found himself blinking more than normally. Everything looked so normal. Up there everything had seemed so surreal. It was like coming of a movie theatre after seing a film during the day.

He walked down stairs and walked into the kitchen. Oddly he couldn't find any coffee in the cupboard, actually there wasn't anything in the cupboard which he was sure wasn't right. He walked into the living room, and realised that there was completely different furniture in there.

"Hello," said a voice from an armchair that Sean didn't own, it was the old man who Sean had bought the house from, "having fun travelling through time?"

Labels: Fiction, Long, Rooting

A cow with a cold.

Labels: Jokes

There are three main temperature scales in common use, Celsius (centigrade), Fahrenheit and Kelvin. All of them are pretty pointless in terms of real life. Fahrenheit is the most pointless of the lot as it has seemingly random numbers assigned to things. The one good thing it has going for it is that when it's hot outside the temperature is approaching 100. A nice round number. But what about when it's cold outside then you're back to random numbers again.

So what about centigrade? Well ever since Celsius was convinced to put the numbers the right way up* it's done pretty well becoming the standard in most places. Scientists must have loved it when it came along because scientists boil a lot of water and until then they'd had to remember some stupid number for when water boiled. Not now. Thanks to Celsius it was a nice round 100. And freezing was just as easy coming as it did at 0. This is all very well for scientists but the thing is for your average human we know when water is boiling because there are a lot of bubbles and steam. So all of this convenience is a lot less useful when it comes to knowing if we need a jacket or not. Is twenty warm? Thirty? Or is it some random number in between? Scientists don't even really use it any more. Scientists use Kelvin.

Kelvin is based on the idea that 0 should be the coldest anything can be and everything builds up from there. Scientists love that kind of stuff it means they can be more haphazard with their BODMAS** and still get the right answer because there are no minus numbers. For regular human beings though, I'm afraid it won't cut the mustard. In Kelvin water freezes at 273.15 and boils at 373.15.

So as we can see for regular people who aren't doing experiments with tiny tubes the temperature system is not fit for purpose*** and so I propose a new system which will help us determine much more easily if we need a jacket or not.

First up freezing day. A freezing day is a day when water freezes. This, unlike the boiling water thing, is useful to know in advance. You might want to take out your snow boots or bring in your tomato plant. So that a day like this will be easy to spot we will call this temperature zero. And it will be the same temperature as zero in centigrade.

Now I know you're thinking. Hey so far so boring. I can just get the centigrade system to do that. But no the big difference is how we're going to pair this at the upper end of the spectrum. For that we are going to use 100 from the Fahrenheit system. Because that's what we want to know. We want to know is it approaching a boiling day not is it approaching boiling water.

So there you have it. A new system for measuring temperature which is more useful for deciding if you need on the one hand to take off your jacket or on the other bring in your tomato plant. And what, you may ask, is the temperature of boiling water in this new scheme? Well I'm tempted to say that it doesn't matter. But since you ask it's 265. Anyway here is a handy chart to pin up on the wall the next time you're listening to the weather. I'm going to have to get on and mention this to the BBC. I'll let you know what they say.

Conversion to Andronov from Celsius: A = C * 2.647059

	Kelvin	Celsius	Fahrenheit	Andronov
Absolute 0	0.00	-273.15	-459.67	-723.04
Freezing	273.15	0.00	32.00	0.00
Boiling Day	310.93	37.78	100.00	100.00
Boiling Water	373.15	100.00	212.00	264.71

[Update: The conversion rate has been changed, please check here: Temperature rising?]

* He originaly had 100 as freezing and 0 as boiling!

** Brackets Of Division Multiplication Addition Subtraction (BODMAS) is the order in which operators are executed in mathematics. Negative numbers can cause weird problems unless you bracket them correctly.

*** I hate this phrase - that is all!

Labels: Andronov Scale, Articles

The one that's up the spout.

Labels: Jokes