Category: Uncategorized

As usual, I find myself looking for sequences that may not exist. Having missed out on e-everything and being far too late for i-everything I am busy trying to predict whether it would be a vowel or a consonant next. Would it be o-everything – o-Pod, o-Life, o-Man, or perhaps something more prosaic like B. B-Bop for your B-Pod in your B-Life. Although, on second thoughts, that sounded a bit negative.

Perhaps in our 2.0 world, it should be a number instead. A prime, obviously. And nothing as mundane as a single digit. 23-Pod, I’m having a 23-life. Or maybe just Pod-everything. I’m listed to my Pod-Pod while eating my PodDonald
Until it comes out of beta, naturally.

Funny how it’s rarely better when it comes out of beta, eh? Little bit of nerd humour for you there. Biting satire. Nibbling at the very ankles of mediocrity.

Which reminds me…. superstition. What’s super about it? And can any jokes be truly free of Seinfeld in our inter-media age? Ok. So we’ll gloss the super. So – we’re left with the stitious. Do you stit? The only word I can think of with a similar ending is fictitious. Which leaves a stump of ‘titious’ and a prefix of ‘s’ or ‘fic’. Which is a neat piece of synchronicity (bright and warm and blue and free).and haven’t a very pleasant Pod-Life. In fact, let’s go the whole hog shall we? Let’s fuck-everything. It’s the modern way. I want to listen to Fuck-Lo on my Fuck-Pod from Fuck Tunes while eating a FuckBurger from FuckDonalds.

I have not so much been avoiding writing as running (in as far as it is possible to run while firmly glued to a chair) away from any semblance of fiction. It has even got to the stage where I was considering starting a spreadsheet to chart the time and type of displacement activity I was taking part in, until it dawned on me that this was in itself a displacement activity. My life would probably be much richer where it not for alcohol and spreadsheets.

Can you imagine Excel, the drink? It would probably be composed of different coloured cells that you popped open into a Function mixer and almost invariably ended up with brown, tasteless sludge.

I have never had greater access to entertainment and yet never felt the sensation of time passing as much either. In five years I expect to be so metaphorically burdened by my own guilt that I will have to walk around with a wheelbarrow. Or maybe by then things will have advance to the stage that we can literally divorce our opinions. I certainly have spent much too long with an abusive-partner-thought. Although it’s not very Catholic. There’s probably a law somewhere against not feeling guilt. That’s why it’s branded – Catholic Guilt. And you get to upgrade to Catholic Guilt Complex after two dysfunctional relationships and fifteen impure thoughts. Or something.

Hmm. I need to draw a chart of the times I used the following – ‘anyhoo’, ‘or something’ and ‘but I digress’. And at work I need to…. sigh, let’s not go there. Right. Back to procrastinating properly.

So. Mac power cords. They make big play of being magnetic, for those pesky moments when the cat gets inquisitive and brings your *book crashing to the floor, spilling all your iCreativity onto the beautiful iKea iLaminate iFloor. While the cat gets a new, and unexpected, hat – although to be fair hats are generally unexpected, particularly on cats. Sadly, no room in this particular imagination for mats.

Anyhoo. What Mr Mac didn’t barter for is that I regularly visit a volcanic island. And on my last visit I managed to get a sizeable amount of volcanic sand trapped in my beloved STM rucksack. As it happens, some of this sand found its way near the power socket, where lo and behold, the mineral rich grains became magnetised and could only be prised out of the iOrifice with a tickling brush.

Which would have been fine, had I made the tickling brush out of cat’s hair. But it was in fact made out of the nostril hair of a walrus. Which entailed a very different type of trip to Iceland. Go on, smartarse, tell me there aren’t any walrii in iCeland. Well. There are. He’s called Horace. And he’s missing some hairs. I swapped them for a bucket. Little bit of iNternet humour, sorry, humor, for you there.

If all the world were run by geese. And toast were but a whimsy, as bonkers an idea as heavier than air flight and the concept of a fair trial. Then, my friends, would we eat till out internal organs burst? You see, sadly, I suspect you would, as there is almost certainly a commercial value in doing so (because, after all, there is a commercial value in wondering whether a goose’s liver will adorn a piece of toast that much better after consuming one more pellet or no….

But I digress. I eat liver. Under duress. And I quite enjoy pate. In the sense that the taste does not make me physically retch and I might seek it out in advance of some fish roe. Or a piece of 1976 Bakolite, as procured by St ElvimaDarren’s primary year 5.

No, I haven’t written anything significant. No, I haven’t been running. No, I haven’t remembered my password and I MOST certainly have not freaking passed GO. Ok people?

I have often thought that Bread Knows Best. If in doubt, one has only to play Spin the Loaf (or indeed, simply Use your Loaf) to determine the best course of action for any given circumstance. Of course it helps if that circumstance can be answered through the medium of spreads. Or at worst, pickle.

Ya got me?

So. Loose ends and scrap heaps. Snatched sleep and half-finished sentences. And all that jazz. Sorry, I thought that was jazz, except with added nose-trumpet and sta-sta-stacatto riddim.

I haven’t had a Saturday morning of doing nothing in a while. It’s not altogether pleasant – like all the myriad possibilities of how I might fill my time more productively than I am doing pressing down on me, creating brain fudge. Anyhoo, least said soonest mended.

Finished The Intruders last night. As usual with Michael Marshall’s stuff I was in a frantic rush to get to the end, so I will need to re-read at a more leisurely pace later. As usual, the pace was excellent, the tone laced with menace and the odd moment of surreal humour (I felt there were nods back to at least four of his previous books). I wish he didn’t do the exposition bit at the end, but I guess there’s no point having the big idea if you don’t get to explain it to people. And as with the previous trilogy, there’s a nice open door for his characters to walk back through, should he want to re-visit (although there’s less of a need to, I guess). Scarily close to some of my big themes for novel 2, but not enough to make it a non-starter. Which I’m sure, dear reader, is a relief to everyone.

So. Time marches on. And other such quotes. I have finished my marathon for the spring. Now thinking about one for the autumn. Very pleased with how things went. Now need to transfer some of that dedication and motivation to writing.

I’ve been knee deep in thrillers recently – Brookmyre, Leon, Rankin… currently reading Michael Marshall’s latest. Which is a real return to form in my opinion. I can’t wait to get back to it, despite knowing that lots of nasty things are about to go bump in the night. Many of the themes are similar to the Straw Men trilogy, but I think it’s scarier than the last two of those. For what it’s worth, which is not a lot.

Anyhoo. Mainly wanted to get a May post up. I’m hoping to become very familiar with this writing desk over the next few months. I think I’m finally getting somewhere with my confidence, and there’s lots of transferable skills from the running to bring across. Although perhaps I need to find the typing equivalent of a Garmin…..

This month, I have mainly been on holibobs. And training for a marathon. And readling lots and lots of Rebus, I mean, Rankin, in order to clear my head for the writing marathon ahead. I’ve been carefully storing away faces and far away places in my head, ready to re-draw them on the page, or maybe screen. Still not in love with my plot, but must try. Fail. Try again. Fail better. And all that jazz.

Speaking of which, precisely how much is ‘all that jazz’? Is there a unit of faffage beyond which things simply become ‘jazz’? Although, in some cases, jazz can be a positive – when it means snappy and you know, hep. Which simply proves that the lexicographers and the discographers rarely meet, as otherwise any fule no that jazz would have more words in it. And less. Staccato. Noi.Ses. With _weird_ emphasis onthenoteyouweren’texpecting. Which sounds not unlike a male cat having a bowel movement. If that cat could read. And what it was reading was the Daily Mirror. An article about wild dogs in Tonbridge.

So. Things pootle on. I had cause to speak to a professional blogereuse the other day, and I was reminded that one should really write every day, regardless. Well, I have been blogging most days, but it is mainly of the ‘this is the random pain in my left knee that kicks in after twenty miles’ variety, which I am fairly sure my one reader could do without.

Happy, though. Happy because my favourite word is once again ‘serendipity’. For a while ‘mellifluous’ was nosing ahead, but frankly, it’s not a word one can shoe-horn into conversation all that often. Hmm. I bet there’s a really posh word for shoe-horn. That is, not feeling sexually aroused by shoes, but the spatula that inserts the delicately turned heel of the bourgeoisie into on’e hand-made pumps. Although I heard on Radio 4 the other day them describing the process of creating ‘Taste the Difference’ cakes as being hand-made. As. If. It was made from hands. Chocolate hands. With frosting and hundreds-and-thousands on. Just to confuse CSI.

Dr O’Chief is writing. He laid down the challenge. Said he would write 50k words in April or some such nonsense. And because it’s him, he probably has. I will have my revenge though. By being funnier than him. And removing April from the months in which literature is allowed to be written.

I’ve never eaten a daisy.

Stress. Is relative. Or to be more accurate. Stress is relatives. And what with everything being relative, well that would mean that stress is all around us. But if love, actually, is all around us, then that would mean that stress equals love and all around (ie everywhere) would be relative. Which could be a problem, as at any time I may turn into a square MC, and slam dunk the funk.

If I were to dunk the funk, then I would probably trigger some kind of wormhole, by simultaneously proving that continuum is contiguous and the rhythmym is mellifluous. And possibly superfluous. But never viscous. Betty Boo is doing the do and there’s nothing you can do. Unless you’re a relative, in which case proceed to Go via the stair upon which a little mouse is sitting on, right there.

A little mouse. With clogs on. Well. It sure beats dunking the funking. And if you don’t like, what you see here, get the funk out. Although out itself is relative, as we have already proved, see words passim.

Passim is as passim does. Et tu Brutus. Yes, for are we not all relatives on the spaceship Funkadelic.

And then the pictures of the kittens arrived and all was well. You can’t beat me, stress. No, no, no. Try to send a man to rehab, I say no, no, no. Or, as I am, actually, relatively well around, I say.

Maybe. That is all.

Hmm. And again, hmm. And thrice hmm. Hmm hmm hmm (wasn’t that a song?).

First, some apologies:
(1) To the couple standing opposite me at a crossing after I’d been running 17 miles. The hysterical laughter was in fact at the pain, not the bloke’s hair. Though it was funny.
(2) To the driver of the silver merc that I was charging at like a bull rhino without realising. What can I say – I was in the zone. Nice of you to stop though. Chicken. :o)
(3) God. I swore a lot at you today.
(4) Women. Generally. Especially those with lovely legs. I don’t mean to drool. Honest. But you do take the edge off a long run.
(5) The bloke I ended up racing up a hill. Yes, it was fantastically childish. But hey, every loser wins. Or so Nick Berry would have us believe.
(6) Anyone I have ever recommended this training regime to.
(7) My legs. That’s two weeks on the trot that my legs have told me to eff off and leave them in peace after 2h 20. Sadly today I still had four miles to get home. Sorry legs. Although they are quite lovely and are by far my best physical feature.
(8) My sanity. Despite eating a large bowl of weetabix, two large coffees, two gels and nearly 2 litres of water I was 1kg lighter after my run. I guess I was steaming in the heat. 2900 calories according to the HRM, once I’d finished the post-run shop (whyohwhyohwhy don’t I go before)
(9) The sunshine. You were lovely. Let’s do lunch.
(10) The wind. You rocked. But only on my tail. Blowing a gale down the only big hill in Cambridgeshire is neither big nor clever. You’ll regret it one of these days.

I will obviously have to rethink my ‘no runs except for a long run’ policy. It’s not working. I started this because I didn’t want to get injured. I guess I could just throttle back until I’m really back in shape – perhaps another six weeks at this rate. But that’s simply not the Fetch way….

Runners, I salute you. I feel honoured to be among this mental, obsessed and ever so slightly-smut-obsessed web gathering.

And now to my M&S gastrotreat, as there’s not a power in the verse that will make me cook now and I can’t imagine walking again – ever- or to a decent pub. Plus it’s my weekly flirt with the smirking sales assistant. If by flirt you mean entering your pin number a bit riskily.