Floored all over again

We've not been sitting around doing nothing while all this work's been going on in the garden. Well, *I* have, but downstairs in the new new lounge our Floormeister has been getting on with laying another tranche of American White Oak flooring, similar to what we had laid before refitting the kitchen last year.

He was quicker this time (smaller area; simpler job) and this is the result:

It still looks a bit like a furniture show room in there, since the newly sold parental dining room suite won't be collected until Sunday, and it echoes like a bastard with all the hard surfaces and no soft furnishings, but it now definitely looks the part.

New TV cabinet arrives on Monday, along with the plumber to fit the replacement radiator that was delivered a couple of days ago (fingers crossed this one won't leak), followed in short order by the new TV (Tuesday). We still haven't decided on what seating we want in there, so for now we're going to have to manhandle our existing sofa from old lounge to new. That'll be fun. It had to be taken apart to get it in (both arms off), so we'll have to have a repeat performance to get it out again.

Changes to the Landscape

It's been a long time coming. Procrastination before approaching a landscaping company, changes to the design, holiday absences for everyone concerned (us, the designer, the landscaper) none of which were coordinated, and enforced delays on account of the bad weather, but finally, today, work started on what will be a radical change to our back garden.

It began like this:

At the beginning of October there were still leaves on the trees and the grass, in anticipation of being ripped up any time soon, hadn't been cut for several weeks. The old ratty hydrangea was still gamely hanging on to some fading blooms, but the camellia bush and most of the crocosmia had already been collected by a grateful neighbour.

The conservatory was long gone, having been demolished by the crew who fitted our bifold doors back in June, leaving behind a rather odd fragment of deck that was soon to meet its maker. Well, our neighbour actually, who requested it so that she can make planters out of it.

The site where the old garage stood has been a dumping ground ever since it was taken down in June 2009. It had also become extremely overgrown with brambles, some as thick as my wrist (I kid you not) which wove in and out of the flowering currant and around the bits of old skirting board and whatnot that littered the area. You can also see the rotting remains of the garden benches created from railway sleepers by the previous owners.

So, 8am last Wednesday morning dawned (just) and within three-and-a-half hours a team of three guys had chain-sawed everything flat, cleared the site, taken down the back wall and were making a start with the side wall:

A couple of dozen lengths of tannelised decking framework rested on a pair of trestles and all in all the site was unrecognisable from what it had been the day before. I was already well impressed with progress, but the following day things reached a whole new level with the arrival of a little yellow digger :0)

With the aid of this and the dumpy little turf cutter (just visible at the bottom of the photograph), the entire bottom half of the garden was stripped down to mud and all remaining tree stumps and large bushes removed. The digger then created trenches for the footings of the replacement walls and path. They also dug out the pond, being careful to save all of the rich loam that covered the whole site to a depth of... oooh... at least half an inch.

On Friday, the team changed slightly and split into sub-teams. Joined by a deck construction expert, two of them set to work creating the foundation framework for our new curved deck, while the third concentrated on building walls. By the end of the week the new deck was already taking shape with the framework in place for the apron and one of the steps emerging from the front.

What happened on November 14?

Apart from our garden project starting, that is, of which more in a later post.

No, I'm talking about the extraordinary explosion in my blog activity. Page views to be precise.

I haven't really paid much attention to this in the past. I know who my main readers are (hi people! Kiss kiss) and I also get a bit of passing traffic, but I'm never going to be in anyone's "top ten" blog list, or make enough to live on from the revenue generated by any click-throughs on my ads, so I only visit the overview and stats pages two or three times a year out of interest.

However, when I started the 100 Theme Writing Challenge, I started to check on the stats more frequently. I was interested in whether having some free story telling would drive my visitor count up. And it did, a bit. It went from a daily average somewhere in the high 20s, to hovering in the high 40s/low 50s most days, with a small domed peak at weekends when occasional readers caught up. This would occasionally reach into the upper 60s. Then yesterday, this happened

I did a bit of a double take to be honest. At first glance it looked like most of my readers had evaporated. Then I noticed the scale and realised Blogger had adjusted the graph to cope with the new peak. 293 page views in a single day.

I have no idea what happened. Is it one new reader (hello!) catching up with several months of posts? A handful of people all catching up with a slightly smaller backlog, but all at once? Or a large number of people attracted by some unknown publicity all paying me a visit and reading a couple of pages each? I just don't know. But whoever you are... don't go! Pull up a chair. Sometimes it gets quite interesting around here :0) Especially if you like decorating.

The only inkling I have about what caused that enormous spike is that I had recently advertised War of Nutrition on a "local interest" Facebook page. But I only posted that Amazon link, so anyone spotting it would have had to click through several pages or do some research to find this blog. I can't believe 293 people all did that! Weird. It's back to normal now though, as you can tell from the graph.

In a pickle

It occurred to me just yesterday, having written recently about the "progress" we've made with the house this year, that if you were to look at it from one perspective we've only really got one room that can be classed as "finished."

The perpective I'm talking about is having a room decorated, furnished, and laid out in a way you'd be happy to live with... well... forever.

So the room that's done is: the kitchen. It was completed as near to the date of that post as makes no difference, is kitted out pretty much with all the gadgets we need, is in daily use as a kitchen, and doesn't contain any extraneous furniture or shite that really belongs somewhere else.

The same cannot be said for ANY other room at the moment:

• Rear reception room. Erstwhile dining room, currently undergoing refurbishment as a living room, but finishing that project has been delayed by a postponed flooring installation, a leak in the new radiator requiring replacement, and we haven't chosen any new furnishings or entertainment equipment for it yet.
• Front reception room. Currently the living room, but when the new living room is complete will be flipped into a dining room, therefore requiring carpet removal and another new oak floor installation
• Hall. Currently a storage space for one of the sideboards. And the radiator cover needs attaching to the wall
• Garden. Reconstruction project starts TODAY!!
• Front small bedroom. Never decorated since two months after we moved in, requires plaster reskim and decoration, plus possible fitted wardrobes and bed replacement.
• Front large bedroom. Currently without any recognisable form of bedroom furniture since the old lot was sold on eBay in August and since then we've had all our clothes in cardboard "removals" wardrobes and the contents of bedside cabinets in plastic crates, pending the new handmade bedroom furniture which won't arrive until next month.
• Rear bedroom/study. Decorated and furnished, but currently home to a huge assortment of packing crates storing things to be sold on eBay, and cardboard boxes in which to parcel them up and send them off when they ARE sold.
• Bathroom. Second room to be refurbished back in 2007, we were never really happy with the result and have recently decided to do it all over again (at least in part) to get it right.
• Attic room. Still only half decorated, now two years since it was completed.

We have often said we're glad we didn't tackle the whole house at once, like our near neighbours who have basically been living in a building site for at least as long as we've lived here. But we're not that much better ourselves when you think about it!

Another family heirloom bites the dust

It's almost eighteen months since I first "got serious" about shifting our old tat through the auspices of eBay. A few months less than that since I blogged about it. In that year and a half I've sold things from as small as an enamel lapel badge to as large as an entire bedroom suite comprising super-king sleigh bed (with mattress), triple wardrobe, five-drawer chest and two three-drawer bedside tables. That went to a hotel owner in Staffordshire who, in the end, was glad I'd persuaded him to come in a Luton van. He admitted he would never have got it all on the trailer he had been intending to come with.

Some of the items I've been glad to see the back of. Some of the really bad DVDs we've bought over the years, and many of the things mentioned on that blog post linked above. Things that have hung around for years not being used and never likely to be.

Some things I've had to let go with a twinge of regret. Mostly stuff that has been part of my life since childhood, but which I had to reluctantly conclude there was absolutely no point hanging on to. The Kodascope Eight Model 30 vintage cine projector that the whole family used to gather around to watch holiday footage, interspersed with reels from my Dad's small collection of B&W Felix the Cat cartoons. When I opened up its old wooden box and that familiar smell hit me, all the memories came flooding back. But hey, I don't need the object to have the memories, and it went to someone who will actually use it.

Similarly with my Mum's old Singer sewing machine. Not something I had any emotional attachment to ;0) but I was delighted that it went to a guy in the Netherlands who refurbishes them and passes them on to retired ladies who are keen on quilting. Once again something that had sat unused under Mum's sideboard for 25 years gets a new lease of life.

And since I've arrived through a roundabout route at the sideboard, it's time to reveal that it is that very sideboard, along with its matching dining table and four chairs, that is the subject of this post. For it too was sold, this weekend just past.

Solid walnut. Yes, solid, not veneer as suggested by the plonker from an auction house who came round to value it and tried to make out it was veneered because he could see a join in the top. Idiot. That's where the wood itself is jointed by the craftsmen whose workshop I visited, aged 13 or 14, to see the dining room suite being made. It was my Dad's gift for attaining his majority - 21 years with the same firm.

Walnut's not "in vogue" at the moment though, and the whole thing was both too small for our needs and too small for the room it would live in, not to mention having suffered from various forms of neglect over the years. It would take an expert, an expensive expert, to return the suite to the soft matte patina with which it originally arrived from the makers. It lived 40 years in clouds of cigarette smoke, was polished with the wrong kind of polish, suffered water damage when someone attempted to wash off the smoke residue (and left a tea-tray sitting on a damp patch), and was constantly exposed to sunlight and curtain movement on one corner, so all in all it was in a pretty sorry state.

And we don't like the style much either. Offspring never do like the style of their parents, do they? I'm no exception. So it joined the ranks of eBay sales. 228 of them since May 2011. Unfortunately we were just half an hour too late returning from our Sunday lunch with friends to arrange a pick up for that day, so we have to hang on to it for another two weeks, which in turn means our flooring guy will have to work around it.

The Acid Test

Hard to believe that it will soon be three years since we first installed our BiUbe aquarium. During those intervening years, we've added to the shoal of cherry barbs to replace some that died, and they've been pretty successful in adding to their shoal themselves, too. In fact since that first spate of fry, we've had two more separate birthing occasions, so it's now entirely possible that we're on our third generation of fish bred solely in our tank.

We branched out into ocellated barbs about 18 months ago too, just for a bit of variety, but as yet there's no sign of them breeding. We're not even sure if there's a gender mix among those five fish to be honest.

Anyway for the whole of those three years I've kept up with my regular water tests - ammonium, nitrite, nitrate and pH - and on those rare occasions when anything has appeared to be going awry in the water quality department, I've been able to address the issue fairly quickly. But among all those tests one - the pH test - has never varied more than 0.5pH from neutral. Until about a month ago when, for the first time ever, the test came out something other than green. It was yellow - the water had become very slightly acidic.

I have no idea why; we haven't changed our routine at all. Not the food, or the water treatment, or the frequency of filter changes. If anything the gravel bed was cleaner than it has sometimes been, and stock levels hadn't changed since those ocellated barbs were introduced, so I was at a loss to explain it. However, since barbs like their water somewhere in the range pH6.0 - 8.0, I wasn't worried. Until, that is, I did another test last Sunday. For one reason or another I hadn't tested the water for four weeks (I used to do the tests every week but when the results don't change from one week to the next for over two years, it's easy to relax the schedule a bit) and on Sunday the pH test came up orange.

That's pH 5.5. Yikes.

Fish didn't seem too bothered. A little more active, if anything, which apparently is normal at lower pH, but not distressed. And another tiny Kevin appeared a week or so back, so it can't be THAT bad. Can it?

Anyway after some rapid Internet research I decided ocean rock was the way forward. Our water is so soft that it doesn't register on a KH test at all, so attempting to correct the pH with chemicals would have been tricky (and I don't like that approach anyway). So off I went in search of a chunk of ocean rock, boiled it and baked it for the prescribed times, let it cool and with some trepidation, dropped it in.

A day later the pH test colour had relaxed from orange to yellow, and 24 hours after that it was lime green, so we're at something like pH 6.5-7.0 now, and it's taken two days to make that change. Which is good, because while fish can adapt well to different pH levels, what they don't like is RAPID changes in pH. I'll be doing another test tomorrow to check the tank hasn't pivoted over to alkalinity, but with luck I'll be able to leave the rock in there permanently. The extra minerals will act as an acidity buffer and help to keep things on an even keel from now on.

Merge In Turn

Coming to the final week or so of the improvements at J3 of the M60, which ordinarily I would use twice a day ferrying my good lady to and from her office. For the duration of the work I've been avoiding it in the evenings in favour of the A34 since the tailback has often filled the anticlockwise slip road right back to the motorway (about a mile), but I couldn't avoid it on Monday.

I noticed the contractors had put up "Please Merge In Turn" signs to encourage gentlemanly practice among drivers approaching from both clockwise and anticlockwise slip roads (which at the moment both feed into a single lane) and on the southerly approach from the A34 (ditto). Once complete, both of these flows of traffic will have three lanes available so you can see how much better it will be. Eventually.

But the appearance of these signs set me thinking (again) about something that has always perplexed (annoyed) me about British drivers. Whenever a road reduces in lanes, from 3 to 2, or 2 to 1, they seem hell bent on dividing into two warring camps. One lot will move into the open lane often several miles back, despite any long queue, and sit there in their righteousness inching forwards every few seconds. The other lot, perceiving that the soon-to-be closed lane has been totally vacated by the first lot, will stay in that lane until the last minute, and then attempt to cut in. At which point the righteousness of the first lot boils over into righteous indignation as they hog the bumper of the car in front to freeze out any car wanting to "push in."

This behaviour is a constant source of amusement to me, on those days where I'm in an expansive, forgiving mood. And annoyance when I'm not feeling so full of the milk of human kindness. My question - one of my questions - to the drivers in the first group is: at what point do you decide that you should abandon the unoccupied road in front of you in favour of a lengthy, barely moving queue? Which distance would you consider socially acceptable? 200 metres? 500? A mile? Two miles? And what good do you think it does to sit queuing in one lane when there's a totally empty lane going to waste immediately to your left, or right?

What is so magical about the appearance of a "Please Merge In Turn" sign that lights up the lightbulb in your head and makes you realise that it makes more sense for everyone to use as many lanes as possible, for as long as possible, and then merge in turn at the point where one lane disappears. Not to mention being a fairer and less stressful alternative.

Is it embarrassment that makes you try to stop drivers merging late from the other lane? A realisation that you too could have "pushed" to the front and not wasted all that time queuing? Or a determination to force the other person, even if only for one more car length, to "waste" a fraction of the time that you've wasted in your queue? Can't you see that merging in turn means no-one gets an unfair advantage, or disadvantage, over anyone else?

As someone aptly commented the other day: you are the result of 4 billion years of evolution. Fucking act like it.

New New Lounge

I threatened to return to decorating tales once the 100 Themes Writing Challenge was done, so this is me making good on that threat.

At the start of the year we decided to try and make 2012 the year the house was "finished." Although we're going to miss that target by a small margin, we have made amazing progress. The current project (which has been going on, unbelievably, longer than the aforementioned Challenge) is now nearing completion, with only a radiator to fit (due this coming Friday), new oak floor to lay (originally planned for the following Monday but now put back a week - to the 19th November - by the fitter) and some furniture to find, but we won't let the lack of new furniture prevent us from occupying what has become known as the "new new lounge" once construction and decor are complete.

"New new lounge"? Yes, well we did use this room as a lounge when we first moved in, but after suffering heat exhaustion during the summer of 2007 we decided to swap the lounge and dining room around, and moved into what was then the "new lounge" in August 2008.

But, you know, nothing ever stands still in the madcap world of the Beresfords. We've enjoydured four winters in that (North-facing) lounge, and now decided that, after all, we'd like it a little bit warmer. Since the main source of the infernal heat in the South Lounge (the polycarbonate-roofed conservatory) has now been demolished:

...and replaced with some nice new, double-glazed, argon-filled bi-fold doors, this room should hopefully be a lot cooler in summer. The scabby looking space where the conservatory once stood, along with the old decking to the left, is all due to be spiffed up once our Totally Fabulous Garden Design begins to be realised (another start date that has had to be put back, this time on account of garden peeps being delayed on other projects by the inclement weather). On the other side of those bifold doors, what was the dining room...

... has been transformed over the past five months (yes, it's been a long project, mainly because we started with the bifold door replacement and then arranged just about every other removal/ installation/ trade piecemeal thereafter) into its current state - new fireplace, old radiator stripped out, additional sockets and aerial points installed, plasterwork reskimmed, every surface painted (walls with Dulux Chic Shadow), so it currently looks like this:

with, as I said, the floor still to be replaced with lovely, smooth, draught-free American White Oak. Nearly there!

100 Themes Writing Challenge - Lessons Learned

So there you have it. 100 days; 100 themes; 100 posts. Some of them linked (quite pleased with the way I managed to do that, and how they've turned out), some of them work better than others (yes, there are a few turkeys) but in a way it's turned out to be a bit like photography. Professional photographers take hundreds of shots to guarantee capturing the one, or two that really pop. Professional writers write hundreds of pieces (and/or go through hundreds of edits) and only really hit the mark a few times (unless they're geniuses).

And remember none of those 100 pieces I've written in the days since July 28 have been edited. They're all first draft, written off the cuff, with only the vaguest notion of what I was going to write about at the beginning and often including ideas that dropped into my head as I was writing.

So there's lesson 1: running out of steam, or full steam ahead?
Without a firm writing plan it's easy to dry up, even in half an hour! You feel as though there's no mileage left in the idea, or maybe you've taken it down a dead end, or it wasn't such a great idea in the first place. But whatever the idea was, it must have felt good enough to write about to start with. So more time spent plotting would (maybe) have uncovered the dead ends and the dross. On the other hand - again maybe - you just have to try writing it out to prove that it doesn't work so well.

And then just occasionally I'd hit on an idea that felt as though I could keep writing MUCH longer than half an hour. It didn't take long for me to get a feel for 30 minutes, which is why some of the early stories stop in mid sentence but later on I was able to bring them to a satisfying (if cliff-hangery) conclusion. On a handful of occasions I reached this point after much less than 30 minutes, and if this happened I didn't force it.

Lesson 2: The more you write, the more you want to write
I had a particular reason for wanting to get ahead of my schedule - I was away for the last week of October/first two days of November, so I needed at least 5 posts in hand and, because this came right at the end of the challenge I wanted the tail-end posts done too, so I didn't have to come home exhausted from a week in London and have to sit right down and do another two posts. So I needed to be ahead of the game by seven days, but what I found as I wrote those extra posts was how easy it was to do two a day rather than one. Some days three in one day. By the time I wrote post #100, I was 21 days ahead. And on (notional) day #101, with no prompt, I quite missed the impetus of "having" to write. Which brings us on to lesson 3...

Lesson 3 (a good one for us procrastinators): JFDI
Having not only a pre-defined theme but also the public declaration, or commitment, to write something every day is a great enabler. Out of the ~80 days I actually spent writing I can remember less than half-a-dozen when I really "didn't feel like it." Ordinarily on days like that I wouldn't have bothered, but I felt the need to keep up - with the momentum and my growing stash of scheduled posts - so I made a start with the next theme and after only a few minutes I would usually find myself getting into it. Making a start is the thing.

Since writing post #100, I've given myself a break. Legitimately I feel -- we all need some time off even from the things we love doing -- but even so this "lessons learned" post has been waiting 10 days to be written. No impetus now, see? So before I fall back into my old habits of spending days on end not writing anything, I will have to come up with another trick to get me started every day. I've proved how easy it is to write a lot (see Lesson #4) with even only a short commitment of time, now all I need is a reason - a good enough reason - to do it. I don't have an editor-imposed deadline, or an agent-imposed publication target. It has to come from me.

Lesson 4: 100 days worth of word count
Quite a revelation this. I wasn't but a week or so into the challenge when it occurred to me (OK, sometimes I can be a bit slow) that it would be a good idea to keep track of how much I was writing. Regular readers will not be surprised to read that I graphed this up:

Allowing time for the average to establish itself, it's clear that as I got into my stride, my average word count increased through the challenge, ending up at 720 words for half an hour's writing. That's overall -- from all 100 posts.

The fact that I became more prolific, word-wise, over the 100 themes is even more clearly demonstrated by a graph of a sliding 10-day average word count:

As you would expect this line bounces around a lot more, but shows an even clearer increase in my output in the last quartile, peaking on the last day at an average of 897 words for the previous ten days.

Obviously, it's not all about the numbers. But leaving everything else aside for the moment, the lesson here is that, with only half an hour's effort per day, in 100 days I could have the equivalent of the first draft of a novel. War of Nutrition is about 80,000 words. That's 800 words a day for 100 days - easily what I was achieving in the latter half of my challenge. Bringing back all that stuff I left aside before, it would still need plotting, character development, editing, and all those good things. I'm not pretending anyone, least of all me, could just sit down and write a novel in half an hour a day for 100 days (although, you know, many tens of thousands of people are attempting to do just that this month, if they're taking part in NaNoWriMo). But it certainly shouldn't take anywhere near seven years ;0)

Lesson 5: You can write something about anything
Finally, although as I mentioned earlier what I wrote for some themes worked better than others, it's obviously possible to write on any given topic. Even those you wouldn't normally consider writing about. Some will be shorter, some not good enough to keep, but there'll be some hidden gems in there too. Among my 100 I had a fair crop of rough diamonds. To be sure they would need polishing and developing if I were to (for instance) include them in a collection of short stories, but when I started this back in July I didn't have anything. Now I have starting points for at least a dozen strong stories.

100TWC - Day 100: Endings

[ this post is a continuation of the story begun in "Introductions" earlier in the writing challenge ]

"Steven? It is Steven, isn't it?"
"Yes."

Steven looked puzzled, in that way people have when trying to put a name to a face. Like their brain is so occupied with the task it forgets to hold any kind of expression in the facial muscles and they adopt a default position which usually looks either vague or cross.

"Gerald, is it?"
"Nigel."
"Ah yes, of course. Nigel. And we met...?"
"At her book launch. Seems impossible to believe it was only nine months ago, give or take. And now--"

He stared at the coffin lying under a scarlet velvet blanket at the other end of the chapel. His eyes widened.

"Scarlet? Hardly appropriate, is it?"
"Appropriate? What could be more appropriate! You did read her book did you? Or are you just another one of those hangers-on?"
"Oh, I see. Scarlet as in Scarlette. Scarlette Mendellsohn. Well, I suppose that clears up any debate about whether her heroine had an autobiographical element."
"Good grief," exclaimed Steven, tossing his head. "It does nothing of the sort. Look here, what are you doing here? Are you related, or something? I find it hard to believe she would have anyone so... obtuse... as a friend."
"No, not related. I did mention it when we last met, but I could hardly expect you to remember. We worked together on a magazine once. Fellow writers. Kept in touch. Occasionally."
"So you just thought you'd come along to see off a rival, did you?"

Nigel took a step back.

"I don't know why you're being so aggressive. This is a funeral, for God's sake. I remember you now. You were the same at the launch. I thought at first it was nerves, or you didn't like crowds, or something like that. But you're just an obnoxious twerp really aren't you?"
"Yes, it is a funeral. So you might take your own advice and relax a bit. I'm sorry if my attempt at humour fell on stony ground. It does get me into trouble more often that not. To my mind a funeral's exactly the right place for black comedy."
"Well, really!"
"Oh don't get all upset. She wouldn't want that. What do you think that scarlet blanket is all about. It's not just an homage to her heroine, who she invested with every strength she aspired to in life. It's a statement. A declaration that today is not about mourning, it's about celebrating."
"Celebrating her life? How predictable."
"Not just her life. Ours. The fact that life goes on."
"In the midst of life we are in death?"
"It's more the other way round. Even though we're surrounded by death, we're all still alive. Yes, we'll all miss her, of course we will. Some more than others," Steven said, looking sharply at Nigel, "but we shouldn't get lost in grief when there's so much to be grateful for."
"Like what?"
"Are you serious? Look around! To take one obvious example: her book. She's left that for us. It's full of life lessons you know, if you could but read between the lines."
"I haven't."
"I didn't think you had."
"No, read the book I meant. You asked me earlier if I'd read it. I haven't."
"Well you should."
"It's a bit late now."
"What for? You wouldn't be reading it to tell her what you thought."
"I probably wouldn't have done that anyway if I'm honest. I never really liked her writing when we worked together. I always found it a bit twee."
"Twee? Twee!?"
"Sorry, maybe it's just me."
"I'm pretty sure it is just you. Everyone we know loved her writing and took every opportunity to tell her so."
"That's nice."
"You don't sound convinced."
"Don't mind me. I have a particular sensitivity to sycophancy."
"Now who's being aggressive?"
"I'm not being aggressive, just stating a fact. I can smell it. Makes my nose itch to tell you the truth. Did you really like her writing?"
"Yes!"
"Really?"
"Well, not all of it maybe. But most of it was good."
"Most?"
"Well, some."
"How much?"
"Oh, all right. I hated it. But she was one of my best friends. I could hardly tell her the truth now, could I?"
"And exactly what gives you the right to call yourself one of her best friends if you couldn't tell her the plain truth?"
"It's only my opinion. Everyone else loves it!"
"Or they're all in the same boat as you. They hate it really, but they think you love it."
"Hardly matters now anyway, does it?"
"That depends very much on what you believe. Because if there's an after-life then she'll be up there right now, seething about the fact that you hated her writing and you never had the guts to tell her."
"I'm an atheist."
"And yet here you are, in church."
"It's expected."
"What is?"
"Coming to the funeral. Singing a few songs."
"Saying a few prayers."
"I mumble through that bit."
"I expect you mime to the songs too, do you?"

Steven blushed.

"Thought so. So you pretended you liked her book, pretend to sing and pray at her funeral. And you reckon you were her best friend. God help her, she's better off dead."

100TWC - Day 99: Friendship

This post has a lot of tags. It started off with more but I blew Blogger's limit. I didn't even know there was a limit! See, friendship touches so many areas of my life that Blogger can't cope. I'm half expecting it to seize up in the middle of this post. Let's see how we get on...

With the last post of my 100-day (aka 100-theme) writing challenge in sight, friendship has been much on my mind. I've had some really nice comments and feedback on here, but what's been even better, and more surprising, is the feedback I've had in real life. Whenever I've met up with friends at least one of them has commented on each occasion how much they've been enjoying the writing. I've been enjoying it too, of course, in fact that's one of the things I'll be including in the "lessons learned" follow-up post I'll be writing over the weekend. But it's one thing to gain enjoyment from something yourself, and totally another thing to find out that you've been giving enjoyment to others. Writing can be a solitary experience (all writers say this, at least those who speak/write/email to me) with -- often -- not much in the way of validation or appreciation, so it's really cool to hear the opinions of readers, which posts they liked best and why, etc.

I'd also be really interested to hear which ones folk thought didn't work out so well. To see how this matches my own feelings, for one thing, but also because it's all part of the learning experience. Just doing this stuff has helped me improve enormously, but really good feedback that mentions the bad as well as the good, is also a huge help.

I appear to have drifted off topic somewhat, so to drag it back to friendship: I've been lucky. When I talk about the times we have with mates -- the trips to the Lakes, weekends away, meals out (and in) -- the single most common response is how unusual it is for a bunch of guys to have kept a communal friendship going for so long. I'm not sure how rare it is in the great scheme of things, but those who comment on it seem to think it's pretty rare. Much more common for women to have a "girly group of friends"; less so for guys to have a "blokey group", apparently.

I've known for many years that social groups depend on key individuals to hold them together. I had an old colleagues network at one time -- around two dozen people who all used to work together in the same part of the organisation until one dark day a reorganisation came along and scattered us all across the company. Some left for other jobs, some took the opportunity for early retirement, most split up into three or four units, separated by geography, department and skill set. For several years after the split, we would get together two or three times a year (Christmas, obviously, and then one or two other meals or social events like bowling, walking, pub crawls). These were all marvellous events, well attended and very popular, but they all had a single individual -- the same guy in every case -- as the instigator. And then one day he stopped doing it. And none of us have ever met up again since that day.

The small group of friends I always refer to as my "Nottingham" mates (even though only two of them live there now) have strength in depth when it comes to organising get-togethers. It's not driven by just one of us. Once a few weeks, or a months, have gone by since our last meet, one or other of us will get in touch to set something else up. Often we don't need to do this, as we arrange it in advance at the previous one. It's a source of infinite variety, pleasure, amusement and fun to Nikki and I to be able to be part of this, as I'm sure anyone who is lucky enough to have their own strong ties of friendship will understand. Friends, they say, are the family you choose, and I would tag that with "lines I wish I'd written" if there was any space left in the tag list :0)

As I've discovered (and blogged about before), friends come at you from all parts of life, and another group that I've been blessed to reconnect with -- a few years back now -- has been the curry crew. We may only meet once a month, but I find myself looking forward to those evenings immensely. The conversation always flows, it's always stimulating and amusing, and the food is only the icing on the cake (if curry can be said to be any kind of icing).

I have a small number of friends that fall into another different category. All of the aforementioned might be classed as "regular" friends, and if such a term fits then this small number I'm talking about now might correspondingly be referred to as "irregular" friends. People who, over the years, have meandered in and out of my life seemingly at random, but who whenever we meet will pick up the threads of friendship (and even conversation!) and knit them back into something recognisable within a few hours. I met one such person outside a hotel once, a few years back. Having not seen him for more than five years, suddenly there he was, leaving a hotel at which I had arrived to meet someone else. We only had chance for twenty minutes frantic catching up and exchanging of current contact details, but it rekindled some long-buried memories and the spark of yet another friendship stretching back to the mid 1970s. We originally met at university and the names of other uni friends crop up regularly in the strangest places. Naturally the Internet is the perfect medium for this and over the years I've had the occasional email from old friends who've read this blog, or seen my profile on LinkedIn, or Friends Reunited, or found my website through Google.

There is a downside to this though. The reality of how easy it is to lose touch with people was brought home to me when I attended a school reunion about 15 years ago. It was such a strange experience I vowed never to attend one again (although I was tempted a couple of years back when they held a 25th -- or was it 30th? -- reunion). Not only the experience -- spending 3 or 4 hours in a function room with 50 people who at one time I saw on a daily basis but who, with one exception, I hadn't seen for 15 years -- but the aftermath. The impact of the realisation that I had completely lost touch with all of them, even those I'd thought of as close friends, really hit me surprisingly hard. I guess it just shows that friends are more than simply people you spend time with. Just as it's easy to be lonely in a crowded room, rubbing shoulders with a bunch of people every day for six years doesn't necessarily make them your friends. It knocked me for six a bit, did that.

100TWC - Day 98: Game

[ this post is a continuation of the story in "Advantage" from earlier in the writing challenge ]

The darkness closed in again as Tani left the clearing, as black as before and yet somehow not. By some trick of nature the canopy was thinner above the path that had presented itself to her. Light from the twin moons, which had risen during her meeting with the old elf, filtered down through the leaves and guided her steps. Behind her, the baying of The Pack was more muted. Either they had taken a wrong turn, or her more certain feet were carrying her away from them faster.

Without any warning she emerged from the forest onto a clifftop. Below her the river Mizar wound its sluggish way through the valley, a gossamer thin thread of life from this height. At first glance she thought the path had turned into a dead end. There was no way to cross the gorge. After a few seconds her eyes adjusted to the moonlight, brighter now without the leafy barrier of the forest. Directly in front of her, a ropeweed strand hung down from the branches of an enormous ancient yalloak tree. It was a perilous leap, but Tani knew she could make it. She had The Advantage.

She retraced her steps into the edge of the forest, turned, and with a deep breath ran as fast as she could to the edge. She judged her pace and the length of her stride perfectly, taking off from very lip of the escarpment and catching the ropeweed with both hands. Securing her feet in the weed's knotted tendrils she swung out across the gorge. Her swing did not have enough momentum to make the crossing at the first attempt, but she rocked the weed strand backwards and forwards until she felt it would go no higher, and leapt free at the opposite perigee.

The landing knocked the breath from her lungs but she rolled through it and continued running. This territory was completely unfamiliar to her, but The Hunt could never cross the gorge at that point. She had gained at least two hours on her pursuers. Even so, Tani didn't rest. On this side of the river the high ground was covered in short grass, cropped by the local population of herbivores. She wanted to make good time while the going was easy. In other few hours the alpha sun would be rising and she needed to make cover before then. Even with The Advantage on her side, there was no time to lose.

An hour later, Tani reached the bank of the river, which looped back around the bluff, picking up speed as it fell towards the sea. The moons had reached their zenith and the sky was a clear black. She filled a flask and sat on a rock to catch her breath, cooling her feet in the rushing water which sparkled silver in the moonlight. As it passed over the rocks the river burbled, almost as if it spoke to her. She cocked her head and listened intently to the sound. "Caradh mich," it said. "Caradh mich." With a sudden thrill Tani recognised the language of the elders. "Follow me," the river was saying.

She had no better notion of the right direction to take, and conscious that The Advantage was almost certainly behind this water-imparted knowledge Tani got to her feet and set off along the riverbank, keeping pace with the flow as it bobbed and gurgled over the rocks. Before long the water deepened and slowed, entering a wide sweeping bend to the left. As she rounded the bend Tani gasped as a small coracle came into view, moored at the water's edge. Looking around she could see no sign of its owner and figured in any case her need was greater. She stepped gingerly into the craft and cast off. Instantly the current caught her and set the boat spinning wildly. She caught hold of the gunwale just in time to stop herself being thrown into the water.

Before seasickness had chance to kick in, the coracle settled into midstream and stopped spinning. Tani had time to look around, watching the bank zip past. Surely The Hunt would never find her now? With no scent trail and so much distance between them?

A sudden roaring noise caught her attention. The small craft rounded another bend and Tani's eyes widened. The river pitched over a waterfall only a few hundred metres ahead and from her position in the boat she had no idea how far the drop was on the other side. She lay down in the boat and wedged herself against the sides, hanging on as tightly as she could as the waves increased in strength and the boat heaved and tossed to and fro. And then it was on her. With a sickening lurch the coracle flew out over the falls into the darkness. Her stomach flipped as the craft fell down, down into an abyss.

Tani sat up into bright white light. For a few seconds she was completely disorientated. She was lying on a couch in a warm, dry room, and someone was standing by her side removing an apparatus from her head.

"How was it Tan?"

Memory flooded back. The game. The most popular game on board IPC Prima Donna. The only way, according to her friends, to while away the long hours between sleeps as they crossed hyperspace to their new home on Cygnus Alpha 4.

100TWC - Day 97: Enthusiasm

[ this post is a continuation of the story "A Place to Belong" from earlier in the writing challenge ]

Vince came lolloping toward Carl across the springy green turf. He was wearing a lop-sided grin, made even more lop-sided by the tennis ball he carried in his mouth. He dropped the ball at Carl's feet.

"Woof!" he barked.

Carl grinned at the dog and ruffled his neck. "Again boy?"

He picked up the ball, slimy with Vince's slobber, and threw it high and hard across the garden. Cyn and Roger's garden was as impressive as their house. Even a Yankees baseball star would never have been able to pitch the ball over the tall copper beech hedge that separated it from the next plot. Vince gave another excited bark and took off after the ball, his ears flopping wildly about his head and his tail wagging as he ran.

Cyn watched the scene from the relative warmth of the morning room. A cup of coffee sat steaming on a table beside her, unnoticed. She turned to Roger.

"Vince has really taken to him," she said.
"I know."
"Can't he stay just a little longer?"
"He's been here six weeks already. I offered to give him a hand up, not a permanent residence."
"Just a little longer?"

Roger set his coffee down beside hers. The steam from the two cups mingled, painting the bulls-eye panes of the morning room with vaporous circles.

"How many more weeks? One? Two? Ten? I'm sorry. Sorry for him, and for us in a funny kind of way. I've felt good having him around. But you know how it is. Before much longer he'll start to feel settled. He must have wondered how long he could stay here. Has he said anything to you?"
"No."
"Well he must have thought about it."
"I don't think he's the kind of person to think about the future. He's just happy to be here. Look at him. Playing with Vince. He's out there every day you know. You don't always see him. Vince loves him."
"I'm sorry, but Vince doesn't get a vote here. Vince loves the postman too. I don't see you offering him a room and board!"
"Hold on just a minute Roger. Don't put this on me. It was you offered him a place."
"Right. And it's me withdrawing the offer."
"It won't be easy. Sending him back onto the streets. Have you thought about where he'll go? Where he'll end up?"
"It won't be any worse than it was before. Spring's only just around the corner."
"It's the middle of February for Christ's sake! It'll be at least another six weeks before it gets any warmer out there."
"Yeah, well, like I said. He's used to it. He'll be no worse off than he was before."
"Of course he will."
"How's that?"
"He's been here, hasn't he? Living in the warm and dry. Sleeping in a soft bed. Three meals a day. Walks with the dog, down by the river. You've dangled that life in front of him, let him have a taste of it. You've done that Roger. Now you're going to whip it all away again and kick him back down the road."
"Well what else can we do? He doesn't belong here. He's nothing to us."
"Isn't he? So why did you bring him here?"
"I felt sorry for him. And he found Vince. We'd have lost--"
"You felt sorry for him then. Why not now?"
"Look, he's had nearly two months to get better. He's healthier, he's put on some weight. All his sores are cleaned up. We'll give him some clothes, shoes. A coat. We can even get him a sleeping roll if you like. I'm not talking about sending him back out there in the rags we found him in."
"And that's it, is it? A few clothes and a pair of shoes. Now run along Carl, there's a good man. Don't want you making the place look untidy."
"What else do you suggest? I don't know why you're making me out to be the bad guy. We've helped him for God's sake. We haven't done anything wrong. We've helped him, and now it's time to move on."

Cyn sighed and reached for her coffee. It was no longer steaming. The fog had cleared from the window panes. "I know you're right," she sighed again. "It's just... well... I've got to like having him around. The house will feel--"
"Don't say it'll feel empty."
"Well it will! Just the two of us."
"That's how it was before."
"I know. It's probably silly. But didn't you ever feel there was something missing? I never really got fired up about anything before. Maybe it was all too easy. Having Carl around, somehow it's given me more energy."
"Anyone would think you were screwing the guy!"
"Roger! How could you even think that!"
"Take it easy. I was just joking."
"Well don't. None of this is a joke, and especially not that."
"Sorry. I'm feeling like the evil twin here."
"I'm sorry too. I guess I'm just not ready to throw Carl out yet."
"Can we at least broach the subject with him?"

Cyn bristled, but Roger waved her objection aside. "I don't mean in a threatening way. I'm not going to give him an ultimatum. But we could ask if he has any plans, or where he sees himself ending up, couldn't we?"
"I guess."
"Like I said, he might already have been thinking about moving on. Or he might have an Aunt Jemima in Oregon he wants to go visit."
"Aunt Jemima!" She slapped his arm playfully. "Where did that come from?"

The tennis ball thumped loudly against the window, rattling a pane. They both jumped.

"Sorry!" called Carl from the garden. "The ball slipped. My bad!"
"Woof!" agreed Vince, running to retrieve the ball from a flower pot on the terrace.