No Country for Old Men - Cormac McCarthy

There's a funny story to tell with how I came to read this book... I had seen the trailer over on Apple's Trailers site and it piqued my interest, so much so that I avidly watched for its arrival at my local cinema... any one of the four. Of course, what with me living in the anti-cultural capital of England, none of them felt the need to show anything that didn't appeal to children or Horror-meisters.

Alas I will have to wait.

And so it was that midweek, MG Harris said she'd spotted her book Invisible City on the shelves in Oxford (two weeks early), and I raced out to the local Waterstones to see if I could buy it too. And again, the local businesses let me down. But instead I stumbled upon Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men. Hazarr!

Bought it half price too, and finished just minutes before we did last night's Litopia podcast.

I'm in two minds over the book itself, or is that I'm in one mind over the book and in another mind regarding the writer?

The book is constructed in two separate povs. Since the title and the subject of the piece regard Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones in the movie) we open with a monologue of his:

I sent one boy to the gas chamber at Huntsville. One and only one. My arrest and my testimony. I went up there and visited with him two or three times. Three times. The last time was the day of his execution. I didn't have to go but I did. I sure didn't want to. He'd killed a fourteen year old girl and I can tell you right now I never did have no great desire to visit with him let alone go to his execution but I done it. The papers said it was a crime of passion and he told me there wasn't no passion to it. He'd been datin' this girl, young as she was. He was nineteen. And he told me that he had been plannin' to kill somebody for about as long as he could remember. Said that if they turned him out he'd do it again. Said he knew he was goin' to hell. Told it to me out of his own mouth. I don't know what to make of that. I surely don't. I thought I'd never seen a person like that and it got me to wonderin' if maybe he was some new kind.

And then we slide into the chapter proper, with a third person pov that allows us to shift easily between characters at separate locations. It's all good stuff, nice and simple prose that any reader can understand without too much concentration, and yet in these main narrative moments I was driven to great distraction by McCarthy's choice of structuring:

He ran cold water over his wrists until they stopped bleeding and he tore strips from a hand towel with his teeth and wrapped his wrists and went back into the office. He sat on the desk and fastened the toweling with tape from a dispenser, studying the dead man gaping up from the floor. When he was done he got the deputy's wallet out of his pocket and took the money and put it in the pocket of his shirt and dropped the wallet to the floor. Then he picked up his air tank and the stun gun and walked out the door and got into the deputy's car and started the engine and backed around and pulled out and headed up the road.

How can I recommend this book to anyone when every other word is surely and? It isn't easy.

And yet through this style we know exactly what and where and how - but it doesn't half begin to grate! Use a comma, a full stop or something... please?

The next problem for the reader lies in the lack of quotation marks for dialogue (single or double). Narrative runs into dialogue and others follow without attribution to characters, often leaving a lazy reader (or tired, as I was) a little lost, and in need of some backtracking.

And yet, the story is cracking and the idiosyncrasies of the characters bring them alive enough that any hate I had for McCarthy's style had to be endured to find out what happened next - and I was surprised by the turns in the story. I'm not sure if I like the direction it took at the end (but I guess that's what you get when you're riding shotgun with a writer like McCarthy).

I can recommend this on story and character alone - it may be better just to watch the movie (at least that is up for Oscars). And on a side note, I do enjoy watching the trailer for a movie and then reading the book, all the characters are fleshed out for me - it helps that the movie seems to follow the book faithfully (don't get me started on I Am Legend).

Criminal Conviction - Perjury

A party or witness is usually required to give evidence on oath or affirmation. To lie having sworn an oath or affirmation could result in criminal conviction for perjury.

So begins the House of Commons 2003 paper on Employment Tribunals. It’s in the second line that I find the knot in my stomach turn to cold, hard stone.

There is a chance, a future in which we can move forward with victory in our strides. But, I have to wonder, at what cost?

You’ll have to forgive me for this, I need to rant, and blogging it is a good form of counselling that helps work out the issues. If I don’t, it’s going to eat me up like it’s done before and I just can’t afford the counselling on top of my physiotherapy. Anyone know a good psychiatrist?

This morning whilst I was borrowing my parents’ portable fridge to replace mine that had broken at some point between yesterday morning and this morning – sigh! Warm milk for breakfast – Dad couldn’t stop himself from showing me the latest documentation he’d received from the NSPCC.

For those of you not in the know, my brother was unfairly dismissed by his previous employer (my current employer) on the grounds of having had a relationship with a student – big whoop, it did the local newspapers and nothing more (for which, in hindsight we are thankful – having seen the Daily Mail spread of the former Head of Year 11 from the same school for her own student-affair we decided in was bad enough that local people could make up their own minds about what was going on… let alone nationally. Trust me, give the people a titbit of information and they can run miles with it, just take the McCann’s for example).

Anyhoo, although we were successful and proved that my brother was unfairly dismissed, we couldn’t prove wrongful dismissal. Our angle was that the senior staff had prior knowledge of the relationship. Why is this important?

Simply, because if the school (as in the senior staff) had prior knowledge and did nothing about it they a) were putting their students at risk, and b) were condoning the act, therefore removing responsibility from my brother.

We could prove that as high up as the deputy headteacher had prior knowledge, despite a key witness refusing to come forward because of still having to work with the deputy. We couldn’t prove the headteacher had prior knowledge. And since they’d not allowed the deputy head to stand as a witness (to avoid perjury), the evidence we did have – two witness statements – were deemed irrelevant.

SIGH

So, why is the NSPCC documentation important?

My brother was suspended in July 2004 on grounds of inappropriate behaviour – this is a small aside that assisted in us achieving unfair dismissal. The relationship didn’t become a part of the investigation until April 2005 (9 months after he was suspended, 7 months after the student involved was interviewed). My brother wasn’t interviewed about the relationship until April 2005, and yet the school had officially (we thought) known about the relationship as early as September 2004.

That didn’t rub with the tribunal – they didn’t care about technicalities such as that. We thought it was important that the school had, in knowing, tried to hide the fact in the hope they could dismiss him with the original charges – which fell flat on their face through contradictory and superficial evidence.

Again it’s all by the by. What’s important about the NSPCC documents is that the headteacher made it clear she had no prior knowledge – certainly not before the student’s interview (September 2004) – and yet the documents prove she did.

This therefore is perjury, and perjury can carry a criminal conviction.

Dad’s going to the Crown Prosecution Service regardless of what new evidence he finds, but this helps prove the local authority have been lying, which is good. We’ve already got enough evidence about their attempt to crucify my brother and have him put on the sex offenders register using illegal and false documentation – we were lucky that the Government rejected the documentation – but this again was an illegal act upon which we can take vengeance.

The bad thing is that this doesn’t help the healing process – what we’ve all learnt to live with, locked up in a cancerous lump of three long wasted years dealing with the case, is now resurfacing, and all the bitterness and anger associated with that and what I feel was betrayal and abandonment by the people I thought were my friends is back in my throat – all these reasons why Laura and I will be seeking to move away from Bracknell as soon as our courses are done, in the hope we can start afresh and finally leave it all behind.

But, what good is revenge? For none of this will help my brother now. It may make us feel for a short time like we have been fully vindicated, but what else? What purpose?

I still have pangs of anxiety as the memories return: of representing my brother against my own employer, attempting to get the truth from possible witnesses (no easy feat since you can’t subpoena anyone), dealing with the shock that so few people are prepared to speak, that they’re all far more interested in getting on with their lives, questioning the head teacher at industrial tribunal, or of watching my father fall apart under the pressure and finally telling him that I would represent my brother in court instead.

Nothing will remove those now. They have stripped the good humour from me and made me bitter, turned me cynical. Hate pumps from my heart and it won’t let me live my life.

The Paddington Bear Plagiarism Affair

It was with some nostalgia that I stumbled across the new Marmite advert in which our hero Paddington forgoes his marmalade sarnies in favour of the "dark stuff", and though I hate Marmite as I hate Bovril, it made me giggle, and reminisce.

The year was 1986. I was a six year-old boy, just learning to read and write - in fact my writing had got to a fairly good standard - that of reducing my font size by at least a half, which meant O could write on the same A4 of my workbook for twice as long.

Whoop!



The task of the day - and my first foray into fiction and creative writing - was to take the character of Paddington Bear, whom I believe we'd either watched an episode of in class or had our teacher read one of the stories to us, and write a short story about him.

It should have been fun, and these days as I struggle to perfect my writing ability I wonder why I was no good, why I showed absolutely no spark of genius. In fact, I can remember having absolutely no idea of what to write at all. No one had ever opened my mind to formulating a story!

What a crazy notion.

And I don't know which came first: whether it was this simple stumpage of writers block, or whether I'd accidentally spied my best friend, Paul, scribbling his story away, but suddenly I found spurred into action. The idea was there, the plot, the moment around which the whole story would revolve...

So, Paddington has gone to the theatre, and whilst he watches the opera over the balcony of the family's private box, he grows hungry. Our intrepid little bear breaks open his favoured suitcase and produces the Marmite sandwiches, pops them on the top of the balcony whilst he just- whoops!

The sandwiches slip from the balcony and freefall onto the bald head of a man below.

I can't remember any more of this inspired tale because my best bud, Paul, spotted what I was writing - not only was he a faster reader, but also a faster writer. He was probably already finished as I was entering the home stretch. Anyhoo, he looked over and thanks to my still awfully large font size, was able to spot some similarities in my story to his.

Err!

So, he called the teacher over and dobbed me in for plagiarism - obviously aged 6 and 7 we weren't too clued up on this thing beyond "Miss, he's copying me," but I very quickly learned that plagiarism doesn't pay.

Funny! I hadn't give it one thought, least of all that when our teacher came to mark them, she'd have found two stories far too alike. But then, all I can remember feeling was the horror of the deadline and my mind a blank.

In true Dickensian manner, the hero of the piece was congratulated on his work and the villain whisked off to the gallows.

After that I wouldn't write again for another two years...

The Lake District

From the stillness of Ullswater to the craggy peaks of ScaFell Pike, the Lakes are a wonder to behold. You can keep your Swiss Alps, your New Zealand ranges, and your K2 expeditions. The Lakes has it all... or at least enough of it.

Admittedly, it was a knackering break (as in a week away, I didn't actually break anything), but well worth it for the photos. Even if climbing to the highest peak in England pitched us into chill winds you only get at 978 metres above sea level.


My calves were like the twisted remains of a fan belt, the rubber all knotted and hot, but at least there were great big Fell Walker dinners to be eaten.


And it was at our local pub where we felt the most welcome. Of our three visits to the Lakes, this trip included the best meal at the Horse and Farrier - the second year, it having been closed - and whilst we'd read bad press from previous visitors to the holiday cottage, we decided to ignore suggestions of "rudeness" and check it out for ourselves.



The new owners are a down to earth couple that you might suggest are eccentric, rather than rude - no airs and graces, only blunt reality.

Unfortunately there wasn't any soup - what are the chances of 26 bowls of soup being slurped and gulped down in one day in a village whose local inhabitants probably extend to 10?



We got a real sense that this pair were running everything from front of bar to kitchen, since, there was the occasional moment when I caught a flapping motion in the corner of my eye, and there at the far end of the restaurant area (it being closed for refurbishment), the barman/chef was waving a towel.



"He's, er, waving again," I advised his wife.

"Won't he ever stop,' she replied, sidling past to find out what he was after.

"What you need is a pair of CB radios."

"Ooh, we did for a while, but the ghost likes to use them too!"



Later, after my sister-in-law had failed to complete a yard of cumberland sausage the barlady recounted a tale of side-splitting gluttony.



"Fit to burst," replied Lucy.

"Funny you should say that," said the barlady, collecting the plates like stepping-stones along her arm. "When we first opened up and set the sausage challenge we had a lady come in with a friend. They'd been Fell walking most of the day and wanted something hearty to finish them off."

"Did they manage the whole yard?" I asked.

"Yes, they managed a yard each. And the friend wanted desert. But while I was clearing away their plates, the lady asked me for an ambulance. She said it wasn't really anything to worry about but that she'd had her stomach removed a couple of weeks ago and she could feel that she'd burst her replacement bag."

"How do you forget something like that!" I said. "That's something to advertise: Can you beat the Stomach-rip challenge!"

"I've decided to wait until we burst another," replied the barman.

Withdrawals

So, Police Gig... it's all over now *SIGH*

I'm suffering a depression at the thought of twenty years culmination ending last night. It was an absolutely brilliant concert, though I admit you'd probably have to be a fan and have to have been there to enjoy it.

A basic set up - just the three of them, one rhythm guitar, one bass and a whole load of drums and percussion - a kind of back to basics set.

And they just stormed, with Copeland flinging drumsticks left right and center - he had a quiver by each drum set and midway through he'd grow bored or be primed to move between his drums and he'd fling them high.

Sting wailed as only Sting can and Andy tripped up and down his fretboard as if suffering parkinsons.
Sting's son's band, Fictionplane, opened the concert with gusto and though half of what they played kind of felt repetitious and too samey to what is already out there (I'd have expected more) there was a couple of great sounding tunes.

The Police

As a kid I was brought up on a mix of Dire Straits, Cliff Richard, Neil Diamond, Eddy Grant and Harry Chapin, not really having a musical choice of my own until those Sunday mornings when The Roxy would play on the TV, or the family would all gather in the lounge after an episode of the original Robin Hood television series ended and we switched on the radio to listen to the Radio 1 chart show. 1987 was the year Michael Jackson released Bad, my very first cassette tape - I had to wait until Christmas to get my copy and I was seriously miffed because my best friend, Paul, got his copy for his birthday in October.

At that point in my buck-teethed, bowl-cut hair life I had no idea who The Police were. Their last album had come out in 83 and they'd split up soon after. At that time I was 4 or 5 and more interested in moving from playgroup to the infants and primary school, and whilst their Singles album had come out in 86, it hadn't touched my radar.


It wasn't until another year later, in 1988, that I first came across them and my musical appreciation changed forever. I was 8, approaching 9.

On and off over the years I'd spend time with my nextdoor neighbour, Chris, often playing on their Atari - that old classic Out Run, or Ranarama - discussing or swapping Fighting Fantasy gamebooks or playing with his parent's spanking new hi-fi equipment, reading funny stories to each other with a golden-headed microphone and making funny noises with the effects for our own amusement. We'd met proper at primary school. At the time Chris had a best friend called... Chris, and my first foray into their world was a crazy playground sing off, with them assailing my ears with Michael Jackson's Beat It (as a way of trying to clear me off their patch of grass) and me returning their 'diss' with the strains of Bros's I Owe You Nothing (oh for the love of God, how embarrassing)!

Fortunately we became friends because I desperately needed someone to show me right music from wrong music.

And so it was in 1988 that one day I knocked on Chris's door and he invited me in with such enthusiasm that I thought we'd (as in his dad) had bought a new game for the Atari (Leisure Suit Larry was on the horizon), but no. Chris wanted to show me firstly his parents' new CD player (the first I ever saw), and notably one of his Dad's first albums: The Police's The Singles. He wanted me to listen to his favourite song - Every Little Thing She Does is Magic - and whilst I struggled with the notion of choosing the track you wanted to listen to instead of having to fast forward and rewind, finding first which side of the tape you were trying to listen to before choosing direction (I wouldn't get my own CD Player until late in 93) he played one of what I thought was a truly phenomenal song - that building open of keyboard and guitar, the dash of hi-hat, the drop out followed by a carribean chorus sound, was like nothing I'd heard before, and Crikey! I'd been on this planet for some 8 years.

We sat on his parents's lounge carpet for most of the day skipping back and forth through that album, him always returning us to Every Little Thing, and me pushing for Message In A Bottle.

I think that what struck me most was the drumming. I'd had no previous experience in the music I'd listened to previously of a drummer playing an active role. In the majority of songs I'd listened to the drums seemed to follow a simple set pattern that was repeated adinfinitum, but in Copeland's drumming there seemed little uniformity and it was as if Sting and Andy Summers were rushing to the chorus so that Stewart could unleash himself.

The songs all sounded so different (I'd no idea they spanned 5 years and 5 albums or that these had each been a hit) and yet they went together like a strange story I'd no real concept of - I wouldn't properly understand Roxanne until my parents explained prostitution, that Invisible Sun concerned Northern Ireland, what the hell The Scylla and Charybdis were, referred to in Wrapped Around Your Finger or the irony of Don't Stand So Close To Me (my brother would end up in a similar situation some 15 years later).

The whole album was alive, every instrument playing as if to assert itself over all the others, and Sting's voice, and his lyrics drawing it all together, making it all real.

Somehow I managed to buy a tape copy, whether from my own pocket money or begged off my parents, and that tape sat solidly in the tapedeck for years to come, accompanying us on holiday in the car tape player, or when my family grew bored and wanted to listen to my brother's Billy Joel album, I'd pop it in my walkman. Either that or Dad' would turn it off because he found the gorgeous King of Pain too depressing.

I pored over the lyrics until I had them down and I sang and sang. Dad would later ruin Roxanne for me by squealing the title as Sting did just to annoy me (at the time I was going out with a South African girl, funnily enough called Roxanne - yes, we were quite young), and long after we split up and I was in emotional turmoil over my loss, Dad would remind me: "rrrrrrrrROCKS-ANNNNNN". I wonder what ever happened to her? She moved to the States the year I went to secondary school. *SIGH*

Message in a Bottle I'd ruin myself, only this year in fact - with the release of Guitar Hero 2. Those damn chords are just too quick to play without breaking my middle digit.

Anyhoo, they're back! And tonight, the first of the UK concerts, starts in Birmingham, and - YAY - I'm gonna be there, 14 rows from the front on the floor in front of the stage.

14 rows! They can sweat on me!


So, this is a big thanks to Chris for giving me musical sense and helping me fall in love with the greatest rock band in the world... in my opinion ;)

Learning to live

When a friend asked me to go with her to a Spiritualist Church I’d no idea how eagerly I’d take up her request. But, like a fearless explorer in a new world, absorbing all that I could in my search to find greater meaning to my life, I had no idea where that path would lead.

“They believe in Jesus Christ, but they also believe that through spiritual healing and clairvoyance we can communicate with people in the spirit world,” Sandra told me.

We shared an interest in spiritualism and the paranormal and whilst Sandra was a lapsed Christian and I an agnostic, unable to align myself with the regiment of religion, we were both eager to find out more. I knew that orthodox Christianity believed spiritualism was just another aspect of occultism, but I’d paid to see a psychic medium in the past (who told me I’d have twin boys in five years time – that was almost ten years ago, and I’m still waiting – and that I was allergic to cola – a revelation that has changed my previously phlegmy life) and I liked to think I was fairly open minded. It helped that my parents let me come to my own conclusions about religion.

There would be a service of hymns and prayer and then the guest medium would work for an hour with the congregation. It sounded like a great opportunity to get a free reading, and I relished the thought of returning to my parents afterwards to deliver a message from my grandfather – he’d died the year before and spiritualists believe it takes roughly a year for the deceased to try to make contact – some woolly notion that the spirit needs time to recuperate. Fingers crossed!

It was mid-October, a Thursday evening, and the weather was typically autumnal; leaves the colour of ochre glued to everything, the north wind rattling bones and window panes alike. Sandra drove, allowing me time to worry. I’ve always hated the unsteady process of finding my feet with strangers and that was amplified by my concern about what this evening would involve. Will they indoctrinate me into a secret society? Will I be torn away from friends and family because they don’t share my new beliefs? Will it turn out to be nothing more than tea with a bunch of old folk discussing auras (like a group of sober hippies) or clichés about meeting tall dark strangers?

Of the two of us, I was the more sceptical. I’d never trusted the ritualistic nature, self-love and blinkered world view my Christian-practicing cousins exhibited, and of all the times I’d tried praying as a child I simply couldn’t make myself believe that there existed a great entity called God whose ego was so small he needed me to worship him. The flipside however, was that I’d always had an innate fear of death. During primary school, after Mum and Dad had put me to bed, black thoughts would cloud over me in the darkness and if I wasn’t worrying about death I was struggling with the concepts of what existed before the Big Bang, and what would exist when everything ended. My parents spent many a night attempting to consol me, though nothing can wrestle the weight of the universe from a child’s shoulders. How do you pacify a child that has realised he doesn’t want to die, and yet can understand that living for eternity isn’t much better? More often than not only my crying would exhaust me into sleep.

So there we were, sat amongst believers; a different kind to my cousins, but believers all the same. Both looking for deeper meaning and answers to life’s bigger questions. The hall was plain looking and it had an antiquated seventies feel that I found stale and stifling; as if somehow its furnishings being of a certain time period meant the mindsets of its inhabitants were stuck there also – I’ve felt this of most contemporary churches I’ve visited. It could have been a community hall were it not for the copious bouquets of flowers and the wood dais upon which the church leaders sat.

After the service the guest medium took to the stand. Millions of people watch the likes of Colin Fry on television or pay to attend “evenings with a psychic” in the hope of receiving a message from the other side, or hearing from deceased relatives. The guest medium at the church was no different. I couldn’t help but be in awe at the work he did, the messages he gave. It is a unique experience to watch comprehension float to the surface of someone’s face because they can accept the medium’s description of someone or something close to them, or see their tears as a long lost memory is recounted before the keen listeners. I thought it was wonderful.

I didn’t receive a message myself that night – I had secretly hoped – but when Sandra drove me home I was filled with a sense of well-being, as if I had a place in the universe after all.

We attended the church every Thursday thereafter, staying after the service to join a psychic circle held upstairs. A creepy room lined with dusky wallpaper. It housed nearly twenty old-wood chairs and an empty wardrobe – allegedly used for transmogrification and the suchlike. Six months in and during a conversation with one of the church leaders I was advised I would become a trance medium. I was elated that one day I would be able to wield such a skill and have concrete proof of the continuation of the human soul. Except that I don’t believe it to be true.

Sandra and I joined another psychic circle where we developed skills of psychometry, tarot reading, meditation and mediumship, and for a good year I found harmony with the fear of death that had plagued me so. I described people I didn’t know and had never seen, detailed imagery and gave messages to people that made them truly stop and listen to what I had to say, before thanking me with shocked faces and shining eyes.

After a year however, while Sandra’s abilities seemed to grow exponentially, I found that mine floundered. All the imagery I had seen in my head I’d plucked out of nothing, like the proverbial rabbit pulled from the empty magician’s hat. I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d made it all up – if that’s all we were doing. In Victorian times many magicians started their careers giving séances and cold reading an audience. They used the Barnum effect to elicit emotional reactions that spoke more about the audience’s willingness for communion with spirits to be true than the reality. My psychic group reminded me that that’s what clairvoyance is – seeing – just as clairaudience is hearing spirits and clairsentience is sensing. It was suggested I’d merely hit a plateau in my learning. I wasn’t sure. I began to feel like a fake. When the group meditated I fell into a sleep, rousing only when the others came out of their reflections. One by one we’d tell the others what we’d seen, heard, felt; only I couldn’t. I had nothing to tell.

Eventually I left the group and the church. My search for meaningful meditation was over.

It dawned on me as I worried over my failing belief that I had spent too much time trying to communicate with the dead. I realised that in focusing so much on what comes after, I was giving no time to the here and now. To this day I believe that whilst there are charlatans, there are many more doing good work, who give others hope in the afterlife. But, I came to understand that whether or not any of it is true, whether or not I really communicated with the dead, is irrelevant. I believe that I have only one life to live and I believe that I owe it to myself to live my life rather than seek out a cheat or shortcut. Who wants to know what’s in store? Or that they’ll never win the lottery? I’d rather live in hope.

To my adult mind the notion of death and endings is still frightening, and there are still some nights when I wake suddenly with those dark clouds collecting above me. My heart thuds with a surge of adrenaline, my unconscious mind imposing my fear of the end of all things upon me. I get up and go to the loo, or I have a drink, but the storm refuses to shift. My pulse races and time seems to be streaming by, everything in flux, yet my body and mind move so very slow.

But I don’t turn my thoughts to spiritualism or the theory that spirits watch over us. I don’t concern myself with the belief shared by millions across the globe that death is just a curtain behind which the secrets of the universe shall be revealed. Because, still, at some point there will come an ending, and no amount of self delusion or faith is going to prevent that.

Now though, when I feel the depression take hold, I turn over in bed and watch my wife sleeping beside me. Now, when I think of the end of all things, I listen to her soft breaths; watch the flutter of her eyelids as she dreams. I kiss her forehead in the darkness and I consol myself that whatever or wherever that end is, we will all go to it, together.

Craziest News Story of the Week

Bobby Brown Believes He's Still a Target for Bin Laden
R&B star Bobby Brown is still convinced Osama Bin Laden wants him dead so he can marry Whitney Houston - 11 months after the singers officially separated. Brown's 14-year marriage to Houston came to an end when their divorce was finalised earlier this year, but the hitmaker remains adamant he is on the al Qaeda leader's hitlist. He even hired extra security to guard him on his recent tour of Australia. He tells the New York Daily News, "I figure if Bin Laden wants me, and everybody is looking for him, it probably won't happen. But if he wants to try and find me for something so stupid, he can do what he wants. I have to leave it in the hands of my higher power. Come on, if anybody (else was) threatened by Al Qaeda, they'd take it seriously."
- http://www.imdb.com News

Warning - disturbing visceral imagery

So, I was called to the lending floor yesterday by the supervisor and found her stood at the printer collecting some sheets of paper. And right by where she was stood, a dirty looking man (dirty in the social-outcast kind of sense) was watching videos on Youtube of men in domestic settings being manhandled by scantily-clad muscled women.

That's nice! Well, er... he seemed to think so.... because his hand disappeared beneath the computer desk and I could clearly see him beating a rhythm - and he didn't appear to be listening to pop music. I guess you could call it funky!

To call me shocked is an understatement. I really can't think of a polite metaphor to use here so I'm going to avoid it. There we were, two members of staff on one side, another member of the public on the other. A third member of staff came over, and still he beat that rhythm.

Eventually - I say eventually because we were all taken aback enough to have to draw straws before someone would confront him, hoping not to get one in the eye - someone did go and ask him to stop.

We should have kicked him out then and there, certainly further thought helped us realise that rather than just being against the Library bylaws, it was against the law.

He's going to get a visit in the coming days by the Police, as are we! Yay, you know, I've spoken to the Police more times in the past few years than any normal citizen should have to - they are often so joyless.

Maybe if they spent some time with Mr Beater, they might learn to share that grin on his face.

Oh God, please tell me that's salad cream in my sandwich. Hurgh!

Exhausted

Okay, first off - no spoilers. Next, I've done it. We woke up at 23:00 hours and joined the Waterstones queue at 23:15 - there were already 60 people in front of us. A mostly quiet time - still knackered from sleep - that trundled by. We grabbed our books and were home by 12:45. We immediately set about preparing snacks and drinks to keep us awake over the remaining hours before dawn.

So there we sat with the Deathly Hallows in our laps - all 600+ pages of it - and read, and read, and read. Laura got 20 pages ahead by 4am and fell asleep allowing me to breeze an extra 40 before I acknowledged my eyes were shut. Just as dawn was breaking we went up for a break, waking at 8, and continuing our mammoth task at 8:20.

And there we stayed until 10. And it's all down now. What a book! Overly long, epic, emotional, drawn out, so fast-paced as to fly, and brilliant.

And there we go. Harry Potter is at an end. Crazy.

RIP - Douglas Hill

I'm always in awe of the nature of coincidence. Strange serendipity brought me to Douglas Hill's obituary today. I'd returned to Waterstones to de-bear from my blue costume (I was sweating like a... big blue bear in summer) and was cooling down with a copy of Waterstones's The Bookseller when I came across it.

Douglas Hill is best known for his Last Legionary quartet, which I'm sure many of us read in school. Anyhoo, why has this affected me so?

Back in 2004 I'd just joined Litopia and had simultaneously started writing a new piece of fiction - Mephisto - I'd sent it off to Real-Writers and paid the handsome sum of £50 for a professional critique. It was the first one I'd ever gone for beside attempting to bug Terry Pratchett once in 1998 via e-mail for him to read my fantasy novel and tell me how to make it better (he wasn't best pleased).

Douglas Hill was the poor pro who had to wade through my turgid prose - The Douglas Hill (come on, work with me here people). He was blunt, to the point, and absolutely brilliant. Along with the support at Litopia and Douglas's deft chop at the crap I was secreting I don't think I'd be anywhere near to the writer I am at the moment (hopefully still moving up). Reading back through it, it's fairly amusing. Here's the covering letter that came with it:

The appraisal of your novel extract is enclosed.

It isn't very promising, I'm afraid. Douglas Hill felt you have a lot to learn if you are going to pull off a novel like this. It's clear you have great enthusiasm and a vivid imagination, but writing fiction is hard work, and successful novelists have taken the time to learn the skills before embarking on anything too ambitious.

You may find Douglas's criticism harsh, but at Real Writers we see little point in telling anything less than the truth as we see it. Douglas has many years of experience in publishing; he is a fantasy writer of some renown, and has also worked both in-house and freelance as an editor. So he knows what works, and what publishers look for; his opinion is worth having, even when he doesn't say what you want to hear.

God Rest in Peace, Douglas. Thanks for your help.

Bear

I'm happily going about my daily routine on a saturday - sat at work reading a book - and I'm acosted by the Bookstart Librarian who pleads with me to help her on Tuesday by wearing the Bookstart Bear costume in the Town Centre between 9:30am and 1pm.

Naturally I said yes, I'd help her out - beats doing IT... at least that's what I thought until I woke last night in a cold sweat: I'm going to wear a huge bear costume out in public!

What the hell was I thinking?

So, this morning the costume was waiting to be tried on. At much to the amusement of my coworkers I did my dress rehearsal. Here's me at one of my more sober moment:

I've managed to tap dance, play happy and sad, walk jovially as well as the bear-zombie walk, I even re-enacted Darth Vader's role, but no one would let me do Riverdance.

Seeded

So, I entered FeverPitch didn't I, and got turned down... boo! So, I'd put it into my head that I haven't learnt anything and am in fact a loser - thoughts which Agent Cox suggested might be detrimental to me actually getting anywhere. "Don't hold yourself back," he said at the beginning of the week.

So it was with shock and amazement - I had to leave my desk and take a toilet sabbatical before returning to the screen - that I received this e-mail from the FeverPitch team:

Hi,

As you are a finalist in the Fever Pitch competition, are you able to send me your most current cv/biog as Julian Friedmann, the pitching expert, would like to see them, if that is ok.

Yours,

K. M******d
Festival Co-ordinator
Screenwriters' Festival 2007

www.screenwritersfestival.com

Holy crackola! Top 10 out of 600! I was certain this was a mistake, so I phoned them... and sure enough I was right - they'd e-mailed me by mistake.

I'm guessing that they wanted to rub it in! With my heart still in my mouth I began to cry, but then the nice man somehow remembered me. What? Out of 600?

He said: "Yours was the one about the guy in the coma wasn't it?"
Me: "SOB. Yes, I've just started NAW this year, and it was a screenplay I'd developed for my screenwriting module."
Him: "Oh, yes I remember that. We sent that with the top 20 for the final selection of 10. I liked the idea and your pitch."
Me: "Say that again?"
Him: "You got into the top 20. We had to send them off for a final assessment before the top 10 were picked. So, chin up. Out of 600 applicants you came within the top 20."
Me: "Oh Christ!"

What the hell does this mean? Crikey, I'm starting to do something right. Now I just have to get my head round the fact that God is trying to tell me something rather than rub my face in it.

Yay for me!

The Hoosiers

Saturday night, we're driving home from the Yangtze (best all-you-can-eat Chinese), in Windsor, when on the radio, we heard a fairly catchy tune, though it had the strange lyric of "tippy-toes, my tippy-toes". Laura surmised that there's a big book for musicians where artists get extra credit for working in the odd lyric. Take Just Jack's "casting aspersions" for example.

Anyhoo, the song was darned catchy, but I forgot about it. Then, round my hairdresser's, she tells me, you remember Alan Sharland? Well, erm, of course I do. I went to school with his brother, of course I know Alan. He was in the year below.

Turns out his band finally came of age. The Hoosiers are here with their first single Worried About Ray... and it rocks. Buy their album!

Check them out on You Tube

First Aid

It's not often I get called up for First Aid Duty - I made the foolish mistake of accepting a £20 a month payrise to administer dressings to bloody heads, wave fans in the face of hot grannies, and provide water to the faint. Every time I get the call, my stomach knots. What's it going to be this time? How drastic? Will I be called on to give CPR? Will it turn dangerous? Will everyone look to me to make some vital decision? How stupid am I going to look?

So, when I got the call today I had the same thoughts, chasing the member of staff across the basement asking: "Do I need to bring my medi-pack?"

We get to her desk, where three other members of staff are gathered - doesn't look too bad... except it's none of them:

They send me out to go check up on him, and low-and-behold I'm certain it's the same guy we hustled from the library some weeks back (he'd been asleep in the reference library, at a far hidden corner). What can a nominated first aider do? I asked him if he was okay - no response - got closer and asked again... he was breathing - but no response. I touched his arm surreptitiously and asked again. His eyelids moved and there was a murmur.

We got into a one-sided conversation then. Apparantly he didn't need any help, didn't want an ambulance and was just very tired! I could only advise that he come into the library if he wanted some help - not much else could be done except call the police, and let's face it. The guys specifically chosen the gradient to hide himself from view of the public, so he must either be a narcoleptic or seriously dog-tired.

I came back inside to advise everyone and they were talking about how they'd decided it was best I went out there since they'd all had their personal safety training and had been given all these horror stories about getting close to psychos - thanks everyone, I guess that makes me the red shirt on this mission.

In the hour he's been there we've only had one customer advise us of his prescence.

A Special Place in Hell...

... is reserved for me, I think.

I've just been told off for joking about someone who, this morning, can't see. In my defence all I was told was that my colleague has to go off to another branch because they're low on staff, because this particular member of staff can't see!

Which is silly, at least I thought it was, and of course medical conditions occur all the time. Anyhoo, I just laughed at the idea of it (this poor person waking up in the morning and not being able to see) and I said: "I'd like to see you go stack some books! All that time you spent on your Library Degree isn't worth much now is it, bee-yatch!"

Bee-yatch, incidentally reminds me of that snowboarding film that Harrison Ford cameoed in t'other year - "What's up beeee-yaatch!" - Hilarious!

Yes, so I'd completely disregarded any notion that she might be blind for real - how weird, crappy and horrendous would that be?

I was reminded also of the time I was sat at my desk, facing the window and the ringroad as I do, when a small child went past, and suddenly disappeared, as in this kid tripped on the manhole and fell over.

Needless to say that I found this amusing, so much so, that I laughed... out loud... like some donkey on smack. I mean, kids run about and fall over all the time. Though they may cry, they're more shocked than hurt, and I kept replaying that moment when the figure changed direction from horizontal rush to vertical dive. Kids eh?

The problem was that it turned out, pretty much immediately, that it wasn't a child, but a small old lady. I had mistaken this poor old dear for some young tween. Shock horror! The bigger problem was I couldn't stop my hee-hawing. She'd literally tripped over the manhole and fallen in the mud.

She glared in through the window before shuffling off - didn't see me, because I was ducked beneath the desk, still chortling, and saw only my colleague who was sat there in shock that this lady had fallen over, that I was laughing and then that she was getting the evils.

There must be a special place in Hell reserved for me.

Burfday

It is my birthday today and what better way to hail in the next year than by going food shopping after work and then watching a couple of kids movies with a shandy in hand (not a hand shandy, thank you).



At least I got an e-mail from my second mother, wishing me a happy birthday - my first mother is off in the Scilly... Silly... Sicily... Childish Isles... oh it is Scilly Isles!



Why do I have a second mother? Well, it all started 28 years ago today. Are you sitting comfortably?



Basically when I started work for the library service I came across a branch supervisor whose son is the same age as me... has the same star sign... shares the same birth month... was born on the same day in fact! Turns out she gave birth to her son in the same hospital my mum was at - just opposite Ascot Race course.



Serendipity has brought us together, though don't worry, it's not like either of us are worried that I was swapped at birth. What is interesting is that whether or not you believe the stars and horoscopes and the such like guide are destinies or tell us who we'll become, my second mother's son and I share similar behavioural traits, have similar back injuries (his from a car accident, me from Tae Kwon-Do) and similar tastes.



I can't be bothered to go into more depth here, because I know the depth of those similarities... you'll just have to believe me ;)

Worry about the Unknown

I popped to Sandhurst Library today on my rounds - Sandhurst being the furthest of the branches and actually located in Surrey - and one of that staff asked me if I'd collected my £25.

£25?!

When we had the Salley Vickers event there one of the photographers from the Surrey and Hants Star took some photos of us with Salley, and that was used in an article they ran on the event t'other week. It turns out that every week they circle one of the people in one of the photos. That person then has until the end of the next day, or the end of the week, or something, to go down to the newspaper's Aldershot offices and claim a free £25 prize!

Which is crazy, and rather lucky of me, except... I'd missed out on learning this and on seeing my ringed phizog being posted in the paper. So, no £25 for me after all. *SIGH*

The question is, do I really want papers in another borough running pictures of me, with a ring around my head, pointing me out to millions of people?

Aiye! What price anonymity? Not that any of them will remember me the next week - I've learnt that from my brother's tribunal and frontpage appearance - but it's disoncerting nevertheless. I hoped I looked good!

Installation

I've got two days off work, leading up to the Bank Holiday Monday - 5 days off to get on and do my college work... only 1) My PC at home keeps dying (a couple of years ago I nabbed some extra RAM, which is running at a different parity from the other DIMMS [yes, good ole DIMMS] and whenever the system crosses this parity it goes oopsy). 2) My new PC arrived yesterday, ready for install.

What could be easier than ghosting the original Hard drive onto the new one to save reinstalls and losing precious settings? Would you like a list?

Perhaps not. It should have been easy, but after battling with dead floppy drives, inability to download service pack 2 because my modem doesn't work, and unable to install my modem because I don't have service pack 2... I find myself trying to get it up and running at work - yay!

Anyone would think I don't know anything about computers. Service Pack 2 won't install without killing the PC dead. Service Pack 1a won't install and allow anything else to work... and now it won't uninstall. I can't rejig any services because the MMC won't run, and IE 7 wouldn't allow Auto Updates, so, having uninstalled that, I can't get on the Internet.

It takes me back to my very first personal PC install (I've never bought out of the box PCs). First things first I installed the CPU on the Motherboard, screwed the Motherboard to the backplane, fitted that into the PC Case, and plugged in the power connections from the PSU - easy peasy - except that with the Monitor connected to the graphics card and the harddrive connected via the IDE cable, nothing worked!

I phoned up the company to ask for assistance, and they took me through it. Turns out that I hadn't used any of the plastic spacers between the motherboard and the metal backplane - the spacers would have prevented the motherboard from making connection to every point at once, thus shorting it out.

I managed to convince the guy I had used them ("Damn, damn, damn!") But, whilst we were on the phone he suggested that I just pull out the psu connector to the power button on the front of the PC Case... This I did, whilst the PC was still plugged into the mains, the rear power button switched to on, and the PC raring to go. Needless to say that when I disconnected those cables the world exploded.

"What was that?" Asked the guy.
"Nothing," I replied, checking my eyebrows for baldness.
"Did you have it unplugged from the mains when you removed those cables."
"Sure. It was the backdoor. Nothing to worry about. Look I've got to go, I think the cat needs milking, or something."

Despite almost killing myself, scoring a line across the motherboard and completely failing to install my first pc without a hiccup, I convinced the company to let me get a replacement motherboard.

That was a breeze compared to this, where I now discover the registry has corrupted itself - I swear I had nothing to do with it!

Mission: Literarti

"Have you bought the times today?" asked one of the fairer librarians, today.

I hadn't of course, I never buy papers! Why would she ask me such a question. Kuh! Does this require a reponse?

"If you buy the Times from WH Smith today, you can buy Salley Vickers's Mr Golightly's Holiday for 99p."

What? Where? Needless to say, I grabbed my wallet and ran for the centre of town. I still haven't read The Other Side of You that Salley very nicely signed for me a month ago (I'm really very bad with keeping up with this, having failed to read Freya North, Adelle Parks, Colin Dexter, Anne Widdecombe, the other Jodi Picoult, Lionel Schriver and Tracey Chevalier - all are sitting on the "signed author" shelf at home, just waiting for someone to put them out of their misery). So, why is it that I need another book, I probably won't get around to reading?

The simple answer is I'm a sucker for a cheapie book, especially one written by some nice lady who was more than happy to let me interview her - check out my interview, if you haven't downloaded it from my website, on the next Litopia podcast... oooooh!

I used to trawl second hand bookshops as a kid on holiday - any town or village we entered and whilst my brother zipped off to the arcades, I'd instead be fingering many a loose-leafed paperback. As long as there was a wealth of decrepit looking seconds, filled with worlds of death and intrigue (fantasy only mind you), then I was a happy bunny. It's there that I first fell in love with Clive Barker - no, not like that. Yes, I know he's gay! No, that's not the point! Look, I may act camp, but I'm not. No, I'm not homophobic. Would you stop?

Anyhoo, so, I struck out for Smiths (on the other side of the town centre) and there I am faced with the tortuous task of avoiding teens dressed in red, trying to guilt-trip the unassuming, happy public into giving all their dough to Save The Children - not that I'm against saving the children. But, I'm on a righteous (yes, self-righteous) mission, and I can't be stopped by someone who, let's be honest, I'm not going to give my credit card details too, but will still have to flee in a guilt fervour.

As it was, I didn't have to, there were far easier people to tap than me... this time... but as I passed I got the sense that these new age scrabblers were either smarter than the average, had been taking lessons in sales tactics, or, worse, been members of Jevhova's Witnesseseses - for they spoke to strangers like friends they'd known for years, nay, brothers and sisters of their own family. One shook the hands of someone they'd just met. I'm sure Solvey could tell us more on how all this works to goad the member of the public into a world of debt through guilt, but by-the-by, it felt kinda creepy. "Welcome to our cult"

Anyhoo, that's not why I'm writing. I wanted to say how cool it was, having finally got Ms Vickers's novel, to see a bonus in the back pages. Reading Groups are becomming a real big thing these days, especially with Richard and Judy paving the way (as an aside, Mr Cox's Litopian Podcast 2 had a dialogue with a couple of US agents who said that whereas with Richard and Judy the books are paid to make it onto TV, Oprah's show specifically chooses the books [strictly no buy ins]).

Erm, yes... at the back of the book is a PS section detailing extra insights, interviews, similar books, themes and references, etc - which is a nice addition that draws in the extra depth of creation - kind of like DVD extras - though it would be even better to have a USB flasdrive with this included - though a tad more expensive. I think I'll stick to my 99p version, whether I get round to reading it or not.