It's dark. You can't see. Your arms and legs move sluggishly because of the weight of the water on them. You almost start thrashing about just to get some freedom but as soon as you start you remind yourself to stop. To be calm. To concentrate on keeping your head above the water. You can feel the line around your neck like a noose. It's rising. It's rising quite quickly now. You tilt your head and that keeps your chin out of the water. You keep kicking with your legs, keep kicking, keep trying to stay afloat, keep kicking. And your hands are constantly searching, constantly tracing along the surface of the roof, the roof that you're getting far too close to. Your hands feel only the smooth metallic surface. You know there is nothing. No release. Now no matter how you angle your head your chin is under water. You can't move to keep searching. Your legs are tired but you keep kicking. Water laps against the corner of your lips. Even with your mouth closed you can feel it creeping into the cracks of the corners. You know it's too dark to see anything but you have to try something. You turn and swim underwater, hands outstretched, blind, searching. It's the last thing you remember.

Labels: Fiction, Short

...and asks the bartender for a double-entendre.

So the barman gives her one.

Wahey!

After remembering this I thought, "they say innuendo is hard to come by".

Labels: Jokes, Thoughts

[This is Part 4 of 4 in Pirates!: Out to Sea. If you're interested then you may want to read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 first.]

Marshall could hear that the fighting had stopped. He was weak, he was about to loose consciousness. He took his hands down one more time and dipped it into the blood coming out of his leg and poured it back over his face. His entire body was covered with his own blood. And yet nobody had come, perhaps nobody would come and he would die? He knew that he was very close to the line. The most crucial thing now was to tourniquet his leg. He pulled a sheet towards him and tied the leg as tight as he could. He could feel the bleeding stop. Some of the blood kept dripping down his nose and onto his tongue, each drop tasted like a steel blade, metallic and cold.

Footsteps, there were footsteps, he was sure he had passed out. He tried to keep very still but he could feel that he was moving. It wasn’t the usual rocking and lolling that came from the ship but instead it was… it was… Marshall dared not open his eyes to identify the feeling, it felt very strange. He heard a grunt from somewhere above his right arm. He was being carried, that's what it was. Suddenly he wasn’t being carried anymore, he was airborne. He knew he would have to act very hard to try and stop himself from exhaling air once he landed, he had been flying with some force. He breathed out before landing so that the air wouldn't be forced out. He felt a rib crack, and then realised that it wasn't his own. His fall had been broken by at least one… no three dead bodies. He was on a pile. He tried to lay still, but he was slipping on his own blood. Then he heard it, Pete's voice…

"These are the dead?"
"Yes sir."
"How many?"
"10 in total cap'n."
"Right, see to it that…" Pete stopped suddenly mid sentence, he had seen Marshall lying there, "who did this?". Pete pointed directly at Marshall.
"Not I sir."
"I didn't ask whether you did it. I asked who did?"

Pete was stalking back and forth in front of his five lieutenants. Each in charge of a different part of the attack they were following Pete now waiting for him to dispense gold as reward. They had not been expecting this.

"Perhaps, I didn't explain to you earlier how important this little conquest was? Perhaps I didn't mention to you how important it was that we kept this man alive? So," he turned to a tall man with a thin moustache, "why did you kill him?"

"I didn't, I swear."
"You were in charge of the fighting men were you not?"
"Yes but look at him. He has blood all over him he must have been killed by a cannon."
"Liar!" Pete shrieked. His sword ran right through the sergeant at arms neck. His thin moustache drooped for the last time and he fell to the ground.
"Although," Pete looked manic now, he could fully appreciate the problem facing him. He was about to be hung by the Dutch. He knew it. He had promised them Marshall alive not dead, and the fear was great in him.

He continued, "Although, he did have a point. Marshall does have blood all over him." He spun round to face the cannon-master.

At this exact moment, Marshall jumped up from where he was lying and stabbed Pete through the spleen. Blood poured out of the man as he dropped to the floor. Marshall, made sure Pete was dead by cutting his throat. He looked up at the men in front of him.

"I am the ghost of Captain Marshall. I am here to avenge my own death. You have nothing to fear if you were not responsible for my death. The only person I needed to kill was Coalface Pete here. At the moment." Marshall paused for a second, allowing some blood to drip from his hair onto his face, he knew he must look terrifying. He started again, "I want you to go to the prison and place yourself within, letting the men within out."

The four looked to each other. The cannon-master rubbing his neck as he did. They ran out of the room, fear painted large in each one of their eyes. Marshall wiped the blood around his face in a failed attempt to clean it, he thought of the wonderful waterfall he had found a season ago on one of the southern islands. He put such comforts from his mind, he looked down at the dead. He was looking for someone in particular. Not seeing him there he called out, "Killen! The enemy are defeated, come here!"

[Marshall will return.]

Labels: Fiction, Long, Out to sea, Pirates

Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to make the world’s first bionic man. Steve Austin will be that man. Better than he was before. Better... stronger... faster

So they rebuilt him, and everyone always goes on about the legs and the eye and stuff, but what about the other bionic bits? Did he have a bionic bottom? It would have meant he spent less time on the toilet therefore getting him back out in the action. Surely that would be useful?

Anyone else have a bionic suggestion?

Labels: Thoughts

You're sitting there reading this and you know that feeling like there is something on your ankle. Something that feels slightly heavy. Something attached. Like there's something crawling. Something slimey that's sliding up and over your ankle bump right now. Something that shouldn't be there. Something that doesn't know the difference between your leg and what it usually eats.

Do you know that feeling?

Labels: Fiction, Short

[This is Part 3 of 4 in Pirates!: Out to Sea. If you're interested then you may want to read Part 1 and Part 2 first.]

Marshall looked and looked hoping for a sign he was wrong. He was a proud man, a man that loved to be proved right. And yet he was also a man who didn't want to fall into a trap. He looked, and everything on the ship looked normal, absolutely normal, a normal that could only mean that it was being orchestrated. What should he do? He wanted to see Pete, he wanted to know that old Coalface was behind it. But he couldn't wait for that. He couldn't. Marshall's men had just been on leave, they had been just sleeping with women, eating and drinking. They would be fat and lazy, ready for nothing, not his usual ready team he could rely on. This was the opportune moment to attack. He should have been thinking of that this morning and yet he hadn't. He never, ever, normally didn't think of the opposition position. And yet… And yet he'd been fucking distracted by fucking a woman. He'd been sleeping with his wife last night for the first time in a year. The first time they'd made bed together. And just as you'd imagine it had been earache from start to finish.

Marshall was still holding the glass to his eye and by the time he saw Coalface Pete disguised as a Merchant Seaman it almost didn't matter. Marshall was already onto something else. Already thinking ahead. Already planning what he could do.

Marshall, quickly went downship, onto the main deck and found his first mate. "Killen, I have a headache," Marshall explained, "you get us back on course".
Marshall vaguely heard the, "Aye Captain", behind him as he headed into the Captain's room.

Once their he found the piece of leather he'd been rather unsuccessfully using as a bookmark. He put it between his teeth. Then he unsheathed his sword and stabbed himself in the leg falling back into his bed. The white linen rapidly started soaking up his blood.

Up on deck things seemed to be going even worse. Killen had ordered the ship to turn portwise and the other ship, unseen by Killen had turned to starboard. Before Killen even knew he was in a battle cannon were firing upon him. The pirates of the pirates kept turning and turning and firing upon Marshall's ship while Killen was too timid to do anything about it, and through it all Marshall stayed below bleeding.

[What will happen next? Tune in next Friday to find out.]

Labels: Fiction, Long, Out to sea, Pirates

The problem with social networks these days is that there's too much and too little compartmentalising.

I have a lot of friends in several different groups. If I sign up to Facebook or MySpace then all of these groups will very likely collapse into one. Now I'm a lot less bothered about this than I once was but certainly I used to not like my cool music friends to meet my geeky programmer friends. Now my cool music friends are often as not married with kids friends and my geeky programmer friends go to more gigs than I do. Perhaps it's a function of growing up or time changing things but I worry that on these social networking sites there isn't a way to compartmentalise in this way.

I wasn't willing to give up my first love of computers but I did deny it several times. And because people come to things at different times I probably you have had to de-friend my geeky pals to seem hipper had Facebook been around. Something I wouldn't have wanted to do. I don't see how you avoid it except to hope that all of your friends in one group use bebo and the others friendster.

But this leads to the second problem. Now that I don't mind my friends meeting across the groups I want all of my friends to be able to find me easily. The fact that there is a new social network popping up every five seconds seems to be a bit of a barrier to this. It would be great if someone solved this problem but there seems to be almost too much personal self interest in that for that to work.

The final problem of social networks is the de-friending process. People naturally drift apart in the real world. They see less and less of each other and then you kind of stop being friends. Nothing harsh or dramatic it just happens. There is no equivalent on these systems. Here you have to declare that you have stopped being friends. Perhaps it's less honest but it's certainly more socially awkward. Perhaps friends you don't interact for over a year should quietly fall off of the list?

As my feed from this blog gets repeated on facebook I would just like to add that if you are reading this on facebook then let me assure you that I'm not talking about you.

Labels: Articles

I have decided to change a few things around here, for my own sanity. I am on holiday at the moment, which partly drew my attention to the issue but it's been a more general thing that's been occurring to me.

I'm writing too much on gamboling I'm pretty sure, and it makes it hard for everyone to keep up. By being that prolific I'm almost certainly reducing the average quality level of my work. Also when there are good things written then I'm pretty sure they can get lost easily.

I will still probably write a couple of times a week on here. But the main thing that I will be attempting to work on are a novel and a script. When I started writing gamboling I wrote that blurb that's been sitting up in the top left. I have been using gamboling to try and find some focus and to get the number of words I was writing a week up to a higher number. The aim being that I would then be able to harness that to finish at least some of the scripts and novels. Gamboling has been going for 4 years and that hasn't really happened. So something is going to have to change.

I think this can be good for both of us. I'll be writing more of the stuff that's important and you as a reader will have more time to recover between each article and story.

Let me know what you think. As always I really appreciate any comments.

Labels: Admin, Articles

[This is Part 2 of 4 in Pirates!: Out to Sea. If you're interested then you may want to read Part 1 first.]

"Wait. Turn back." Marshall shouted.

"Back to port?"

"Back starboard. Belay that last order."

"Yes Sir, Cap'n sir."

Marshall wanted to turn back to face the other ship. They hadn't been plotting that direction. But Marshall was intrigued. He had to see what happened. He wanted it to not be a wreck not simply because it would have been a senseless waste of life, but mainly because he would feel compelled to help. Or at least his crew would. He had control over his crew, but a pirate crew were more apt to mutiny than a regular one. It was something he'd seen, something he'd instigated, too often in a crew. And this was one of those divisive situations. Half the crew would hate him for not helping, half the crew would hate him for helping. Basically the only thing they were united on ended with gold for them. And this had no gold associated. So Marshall hoped it wasn't something like that.

Most other captains would have sailed the other way. He knew that. Certainly all other pirate captains, but he wasn't the rest, he knew a signal when he saw it. Or at least he thought he did. If it wasn't a wreck it was a signal for Marshall. So while he wanted for it not to be a wreck he couldn't see a good way for this thing to finish. Like he would have said if he could have trusted his crew, he wasn't happy about this, but he had to know, no matter that everyone else would run away.

The ships were sailing dead towards each other now. There was no doubt that he was falling straight into the trap that the other captain was setting. They wanted him, they knew he would, sail straight towards them, they knew he would have seen him.

It was that moment that Marshall knew it had to be Coalface Peter.

"Bring me my looking-glass."

[Check back next week for Part 3]

Labels: Fiction, Long, Out to sea, Pirates

Because he was sitting on the deck.

Labels: Jokes

Although of course it doesn't happen very often chez Andronov sometimes you are left in a situation where you have some wine left over. Because it doesn't happen very often I never seem able to find a stopper to close the wine. I have recently been asked what to do in this situation so I came up with this handy list of dos and don'ts.

Don't

• Pour the wine back in the bottle from the glass. The wine in the glass has had an awful lot of air near it and that air will all be going back in the wine. That will cause the wine in the bottle to continue opening up over night which is exactly what you don't want. Oh and it's probably got spit in it - urgh.
• Use the cork you just took out of the bottle (or any other cork for that matter). Because of the way the cork comes out you always end up with one end wider than the other. And the wider end is the end that used to be in the bottle. This leads to the temptation to put the dirty end of the cork into the bottle. The stuff on the cork mixes with the air inside the bottle and can make the wine go to vinegar very quickly.

Do

• use a vac u vin this solves all of the problems of air in the wine. Or if you don't have one of these a glass or metal stopper is great too. But what if you don't have a stopper?
• use cling film. It works really well and you almost always have some in the house.
• put the wine in the ice cube tray. Now you won't probably be drinking it again if you do this but it is an excellent way to add wine while cooking later. And it also gets you out of the problem of having to open wine you don't really want to drink just to cook. Thanks to Nigella for that one.

Or you could stop being such a wuss and just drink it.

Labels: Articles

The doctor says to him, "well I'm afraid you're going to have to stop masturbating".

"Why?" asks the shocked man, "what's wrong Doc?"

"Well, for a start, you're in a doctors surgery."

Labels: Jokes

A man is standing on a platform eating a croissant and drinking a bottle of coke. He looks bored and he doesn't seem to notice that the flakes of the croissant are falling down his jacket.

A woman walks up to him and asks him if this is the right platform for somewhere. He doesn't even listen to the end of the sentence and when she finishes speaking he doesn't even react. She starts getting louder as though speaking louder will get him to understand. In the end the man just shrugs his shoulders and the woman walks off not knowing if he didn't understand the question, if he didn't know the answer or if he just didn't care. That's the problem with shrugs, they can haunt you for the rest of your life.

Labels: Fiction, Short

We have a fridge in the garden. And one day it will be dealt with. It's not supposed to be there, it's not like a crazy outdoor beer fridge although that would be great obviously. No this is the clapped out old fridge which we put in the garden when we got the dishwasher. The fridge came with our house and was already broken when we moved in. And obviously I know it wouldn't take too long to deal with it.It shouldn't do.



As this picture shows I spent my weekend filming for the Sofa F1 review of the British Grand prix, oh and watching the grand prix and the qualifying, and the womans tennis final and Die Hard 4.0 at the cinema.

Lets just say that Katherine is very, very understanding. And I love her very much for that.

Labels: Illustrated

I discussed this issue in a rather oblique way the other week and now I thought I'd have another crack at it in a slightly more concerted way.

Why is stealing music bad? I write and I give what I write away. But I wish I could make a living writing and currently that's not feasible. I am writing this blog largely because I have always:

a) considered myself a writer

And

b) never liked the idea of having to say, "well I'm working on my first novel" like every other writer seems to say without ever really doing any work on it at all.

So this blog was a way that when people asked I could point at and say, "this is what I write, but I'm also working on a novel but don't worry about that".

But one day, I'd like to write my novel and I'd like you to buy it. I'd love to be able to give it to you but there are two problems with that

a) it's really annoying having to wake up at 5:45 every morning just so I have time to write for you, much as I love you all. If writing was my job I'd be able to have a lie in. And writing can't be my job if people won't buy my book

And

b) there is the concept of ascribed value to deal with. People don't like to value things in isolation. In fact untrained humans are terrible at this concept in all areas.* Basically it means that if I tell you that my book costs 12 pounds some people will say, "okay I'll buy that" and some people will say, "no that's too expensive I'll wait for paperback" (of course a few people might say it's cheap at half the price let me buy 100 copies) - but that's unlikely. The point being that if you give something away people assume that pretty much it's worthless. And similarly if you can steal something without risk of being caught then you assume the same thing, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Basically people think that it's okay to steal music because it's very difficult to be caught and also the music industry has been exploiting its monopoly position for far too long (each record label has a monopoly on their artist for example). There is a very inelastic demand** for artists which ignores the label they are on. I can't say I don't like X band because they are on Universal, generally I don't even know what label they're on - and further I don't care. I want their song and I don't want to be ripped off because they have a monopoly on X's music.

My favourite argument for the stealing of music is the following: Music costs very little to record professionally now, musicians have the ability to sell live concerts, people who love making music will still make music, so lets force the music industry to it's knees and we'd have far fewer crap acts. Only people who are committed to music and love it for itself will keep performing. Usually at this point, for some reason people invoke Britney Spears:



If you can tell me the world would be a better place without Toxic then you don't appreciate good music. Honestly it's a catchy piece of pop that certainly the world of music would be poorer without and I don't care who knows it. And yes the song would not exist if the music industry was at its knees.***

The model also falls down the moment that you look beyond the music industry. Yes you can make movies cheaply now on digital formats. But there is no way that you can make a movie for anything like the price at which you could make an album. And even if you did only make cheap movies imagine how much of the scope of the world of cinema you would loose if you restricted yourself to only that. No epics, no stunts, just people in a room talking. Yes many great movies have involved people in a room just talking but it can't be right the most stolen movies are exactly the movies that cost the most to make (Action / Adventure / Fantasy).

The problem, of course, comes back to externalities. Sorry for the economics lecture here but externalities are one of the most important things in our society. The economic system rules our lives pretty much, external costs (externalities) are the things that don't have a value within the economic system. The things that fall between the cracks. Eg. The cost of driving a car is the cost of the car, the petrol etc, the external cost is pollution. Society pays (and you are part of society) but you don't pay money cash when you drive your car. The petrol tax is an attempt in economics speak to internalise the externality, ie. To get you to pay for the pollution per gallon.

In music the externality is caused by the fact that each person thinks individually. You think that you are only one small person so how can you change the world. How can you stop pollution? Everyone has to do it before it takes effect right? Same in music. How can you change the music industry? You're just stealing a couple of tracks, it's not like they're going to miss it. They're all millionaires after all - right. But what if everyone else starts thinking the same way? Well the talented people will go and do something else.

The only problem is that unless people disrupt the network then there isn't another solution? We don't have a choice as we're all inelastic consumers of music (we like what we like) and the price is set by a de-faco cartel. This protest is the surest way of bringing the price down to non-monopolistic prices. And it seems to be working. However you do have to worry about the community though. The community aren't just in it to disrupt the market. The community want free music now they've had a taste for it. How do we know? Apple finally released DRM free music onto the internet. And most commentators slammed them for including the users details in the files that they were downloading. Why would any reasonable law abiding user be upset by this? The only reason to be upset would be if you were planning to by cheap pre-encoded files for sharing amongst your friends. A terrible own goal from the community.

I want music, movies and books to be cheaper. I want to be able to choose the format. And I want to be able to reasonable share them with my friends (if I lend a cd to a friend I can't play it, why isn't that how DRM works?). I'd prefer to be trusted by the company I buy from not told I'm a pirate (you only see the adverts if you aren't). And I don't think people should be able to milk the profits for ever. But I don't want the industry to die. I want to be able to make money, survive, even do well in the industry. I don't need to make millions to enjoy writing I just need to have some way of making money. Because if I don't I'll never be able to quit my job.

* You know that thing where you put your hand in some water and you can't tell if it's very cold or very hot you just know that it kind of stings. That's the same thing, but if you put one hand in cold water you'll instantly be able to tell which is hotter than the other. Same with weighing something same with value. Although the water thing is the one most likely to make you wet yourself if you're asleep.

** People don't stand stiff as a board when they're ordering. Demand is on a scale of elasticicity. Which basically means for some things people are very sensitive to price (elastic demand) a small change in price means a big change in purchases and other things people simply have to have you can put the price up as much as you want people will still buy them (inelastic demand).

*** Don't you love the way that I've included a pirated copy of a music video in an article supporting people paying for music? I do.

Labels: Articles

This is the second story in the Pirates series. The first was called, "The Bunby Bungle".

Marshall gave the order to cast off and they were away. It was an unusual feeling for Marshall to be leaving a port in daylight and one that couldn't happen anywhere else in the world as far as he knew. He had got used to memorizing the port map and not having to rely on visual clues like a normal captain would. But Marshall was no normal captain. He was a pirate captain. And he was very very good at it. Three, Two, One…

"One and a quarter turns Starboard" he shouted out.

"Aye Cap'n"

Marshall entertained the possibility of scaring a junior rigger by doing the whole thing with his eyes closed. But there was no point. He couldn't convince his old bones to have fun like that. His brain was still alive to the prospect of such fun. But his bones feared his brain.

The bones knew it was best, even in a safe port like Santa Dominique, to keep your eyes peeled.

Marshall turned and looked back towards the port. Nothing there. Five, Four, Three... He swiveled back towards the wheel. Two... There had been something... One... Something on the horizon.

"A third turn to Port".

He wasn't even listening for the confirmation. His eyes were searching for that glint out on the horizon. A shape that had made him start. A sail in the wrong place. It was not a normal route into port. It wasn't a tack he'd seen anyone attempt. Or rather anyone else. It was his route into Santa Dominique, his route over the shallow rocks only Marshall had the map for. So either that ship was soon about to go down all hands or something very troubling was going on.

[Check back next week for Part 2 of Out to Sea]

Labels: Fiction, Long, Out to sea, Pirates

The cat's address is on its collar, so the man goes to apologize to the owner. He knocks on the door, and a little of lady answers. The man says, "I'm so sorry, I've just run over your cat. Can I replace it?"

"I don't know," replies the lady, "How are you at catching mice?"

Labels: Jokes

Adrian has a great strand over on his blog called overheard, a few of the things on there are even overheard things that been overheard saying. Here's another one for the mix which was announced on my train as I was on my way into London Bridge:

"We are now approaching London Bridge Station which will be our final destination. Please take all of your belongings with you. Any left items will be removed and destroyed by the police if they aren't stolen first."

Check out Adrian's list.

Labels: Articles

He opens the door and sees a snail on the porch. He picks up the snail and throws it as far as he can.. Three years later, there's a knock at the door. He opens it and sees the same snail. The snail says, "What the hell was that all about"?

Labels: Jokes

His moustache drooped unnecessarily into his champagne as he supped and showed his appreciation for the party. He turned away and once he was sure she was no longer in eyesight he spat the champagne into a flower pot. Sadly his moustache went with it and Michael spent a furtive couple of minutes trying to dig around in the now wet soil, dry the moustache, find the glue in his inside pocket, reattach the moustache to his upper lip and wipe the soil off of his lapel with a linen napkin.

Once all of this was over with, Michael decided to mingle. He sidled up to a beautiful woman. On his way he picked up a glass of champagne and a glass of whisky from a passing tray. The woman looked impressed, made eye contact saying, "hello stranger".

"I thought that you were supposed to say that to people that you knew that you haven't seen in a while," Michael said.
"You sure we haven't met?"
"Looking as beautiful as you do, I'm pretty sure that I would have remembered you. Have we met?"
"No I was just fishing, fishing for complements."
"Really?"
"Works every time"
"Well I feel such a sap now."
"So are you going to give me that champagne or not?"
"Sorry, here you are, but I don't know how you can drink that stuff."
"What champagne?"
"No that stuff specifically. It's fucking awful as far as I can tell."
"I don't mind it. Don't hate me."
"I don't hate you just because you don't share the same taste in champagne as me. What an idea?"
"I just wondered if you were one of those guys... You know those guys who absolutely hold their own views. That they're right all the time and if you don't agree with them then you're not just wrong then you're actually stupid."
"Going out with one of those guys?"
"Just dumped by one actually."

Just then the music at the party changed pace from some kind of schmaltzy waltz to something a bit faster. Michael decided to pick his moment.

"Do you fancy a dance?"
"Why not. I like this song."

She looked at him very closely for a second. And then chose to move in close to him so she was resting her hand lightly on his chest. "Can I ask you to take off your moustache though?"
"How did you know?"
"Well if it wasn't for half the guys in here tonight wearing fake moustaches it would have been a pretty hard guess, but other than that there's a lot of glue on you face."
"And you still want me to take it off?"
"Yes please."
"Spoil sport."

Labels: Fiction, Short

But I had to share...



Found in a shopping precinct in Lee

Labels: Illustrated