Ouch

I never learn. It's always when I'm most distracted that I ignore my little voice, and it never turns out well. In the past I've cut myself, broken an ankle, smashed crockery, shattered glassware, tripped and fallen, and each time I've had a prior warning via the little voice, ignored it, and come to grief. Over the years I've grown better at heeding it, but then there's some days, like today...

I was heading out to the dentist, intending to drop in at the charity shop afterwards and then grab a coffee and finish off this month's book club book while waiting for a later appointment at the doctor's (nothing major, don't worry). The book is on my Kindle app, so I was taking the iPad with me. Little Voice suggests it's probably not a good idea to balance it on top of a box of charity shop fodder, as it could slip off. In a hurry and not wanting to turn loading the car into a marathon, I ignored it. The iPad slipped off and took a nosedive onto the front path. A backward glance suggested it was OK so I dropped the box on the back seat and returned to pick it up. Then I noticed the shards of glass on the path.

Yeah. Apparently even Gorilla Glass™ isn't strong enough to survive a header onto a stone path from five feet up. Especially when it lands on one corner.

Never mind, I thought. Instead of nursing a coffee and reading in between appointments, I'll head off to the Apple Store and see if they can fix it. Can they fix it? Yes they can. That'll be £199 please sir.

Hmm. Well. Coincidentally that's only £1 less than our home contents insurance excess >sigh< so I'll be forking out one way or another, dammit. Apparently there are cheaper places to have your glass replaced than Apple, so I might suss one of those out, but right now I'm feeling very tempted by the Nexus 7. A whole new tablet that *isn't Apple*, and comes in at or below the cost of a new screen. All my apps are available on Android too. Seriously tempted.

The February of technology

Which is a whole lot different to the march of technology.

Because our February (and our January come to that) has seen the wheels start to come off of our tech-filled home. Or at least, that's how it looked at one stage, with the freezer developing a problem where it wouldn't, um, freeze, and the pile of expensive TV equipment refusing to display any of the HD channels.

You know how it is when things go wrong. You reach for Google to find out what they're saying on the forums. Or at least, we do. On the subject of our freezer a small number of people had been very vocal about what a pile of shit it was. Well to be honest that's not been our experience. We've had it over 6 years and apart from a problem with the auto-defrost element shortly after it went out of warranty ( O_O ) which was soon fixed, we haven't had a moment's bother with it. That's the thing about review forums. If you've had a bad experience you're more likely to gripe about it than you are to go and give a glowing review if you've owned something that's given years of trouble-free service. A bit more digging uncovered a slightly larger number of folk who HAD gone into print about how happy they were with our freezer, so we decided in the end it was worth repairing.

Which was a good decision because the fault was a simple evaporator fan, replaced in less than 15 minutes and all's well again. No more spongy "frozen" bread or slightly soggy fish food. And better to pay £80 for a year's service cover than £700 for a new model!

The TV thing was slightly more frustrating and hard to track down. Since installing it (at the beginning of December) we've had an intermittent problem where the screen would go blank, flash "No Signal" and then recover in 1-2 seconds. Only ever happened when watching HD programmes or, if recording them, the recording would freeze for 1-2 seconds while the PVR tried to cope with the loss of signal. I replaced the coax aerial leads. I replaced the HDMI cables. I bought an aerial signal booster. Nothing made any difference. Then a couple of weeks ago I retuned the PVR and it lost the HD channels altogether. And then it lost ALL the channels.

Aha! I thought. That intermittent fault was on the PVR's tuners, and now it's gone hard. Plugging the TV directly into the aerial, bypassing the PVR, allowed us to view HD again thus proving (I thought) my theory.

We took the PVR up to Warrington (the closest service centre) where they plugged it in, tuned it up, and it worked perfectly.

Their tech guy listened to our tale of woe, and opined that we had an aerial fault. I've always been a bit suspicious about folk who work on roofs. Roofers and aerial installers. You never can be quite sure what they're up to up there, can you? And you can't check it out very easily. AND we've had bad experiences in the past, with both. *AND* I was well ready to blame that new aerial. We'd paid for the top quality HD high bandwidth jobby and probably had a coat hanger up there. Tech guy recommended a local firm of aerial riggers (local to us, not him) that handle all their installations and they paid us a visit last Friday.

This is already a long story, so I'll cut to the chase - our problem lay not with the aerial, which was delivering a signal "five by five" (or strength 10 as it's actually called on the TV and the PVR) - but with how we were conveying that signal to the equipment. All those brand new cables I'd bought were... well... shite.

New aerial guys whipped us up some new cables in double-quick time and within minutes all our signal strength bars were fully green and everything was tickety-boo.

Anyone want to buy a signal booster?

In a life I more nice

I'm a lucky man. There can't be many men as sought after by hordes of Russian beauties as I. They write to me all the time.

Some of them, of course, take themselves out of the game with their first line. I could never be attracted to anyone stupid enough to ask, in their opening sentence, "What is your name?" when they've sent their email to my primary address, embodying as it does both my first and last names.

In her latest email, Olga assured me: "In a life I more nice." I could only wonder which life she was talking about. Still, I was reassured that she will be more nice when she eventually reaches it.

Recently, Svetlana was also moved to write to me, declaring: "I am 25 years, growth 178." Is this some arcane tumour denomination they use in your country, Svetlana? If so you can hardly expect me to hop the next plane with your life span already so badly compromised.

She went on earnestly: "I hope, our dreams will come true also we probably we shall embody them in the validity."

I'm sure I could aspire to hope for the same thing dear, if only I understood what it meant.

Ocellations

Took the plunge last Friday and transferred our five ocellated barbs to the new tank. I wanted them to have 48 hours in there, producing their ammonia, so that when I borrowed some of the BiUbe's bacterial culture it would have something to eat.

Look away now if you're squeamish, cos things are about to get messy. When I did the BiUbe's filter change on Sunday I scooped out a few handfuls of the ceramic substrate and scattered it among the new ceramic "noodles" that the AquaStyle uses, figuring there'd be some cross-pollination in the filtration pods. I also added the water from the water change (yes, there'd be some nitrate in it, but not enough to be harmful, and there'd be a small amount of bacteria floating around in it too, I thought) and then - the messy part - squeezed out the filter sponge into the new tank. Finally I had a couple of spare sachets of StressZyme bacteria culture left over from previous filter changes, so I squirted this into the new tank for good measure.

Well it's been another 48 hours since I did that, so today was time for some testing. Sure enough there was a small amount of ammonia detected in the AquaStyle (normally bad, but at this stage good) AND a small amount of nitrite too. This proves the bacteria are working. I'll leave it another couple of days and test again, and include a nitrate test this time to see how far it's built up. I'm not expecting to have to do a water change in the new tank for at least another week, but I'll keep monitoring to make sure the ammonia & nitrite levels don't get too high.

The barbs seem quite happy, although they're definitely the shyest fish we have, and spend most of their time behind the plants if they can detect any movement in the room. Once we've all sat down they will eventually venture out, only to disappear again at the next sign of movement. Once the cherries have moved in, we'll be after some new species. Preferably something not so easily spooked!

New Review

I've been soliciting.

Not like that! No... a few months ago I happened across a post by a well-known blogger of "all aspects of writing, publishing and book promotion" suggesting how one might go about persuading one or more of the Amazon top x00 reviewers to review one's work.

Sounded good to me. Sounded worth a go. So I did. I trawled through the top 500 reviewers (this list changes regularly - we're talking those who were the top 500 last October) and found a couple of dozen who (a) accepted requests and (b) had biogs or existing reviews which suggested they might be interested in my book. I fired off the emails.

Surprisingly quickly, I had some replies. Positive ones. And in the fullness of time (it does, after all, take SOME time to read 90,000 words) a review appeared.

There was one request I sent out back in October that didn't result in a reply. But that was entirely expected, since those are his rules. It's Big Al, over at the Kindle Indie Author's review site "Big Al's Books & Pals".

The deal there is, you pick the reviewer who you think is most likely to be interested, fire off a request, and wait. They either pick up the request or they don't, but if they do a review will eventually turn up on that site. And for good measure they will also syndicate the review to the Amazon product page AND Goodreads. Cool!

And sure enough, just last week, Al's review of War of Nutrition was posted, giving it 4 stars. I particularly liked the bit where he says "[War of Nutrition] surpasses the typical thriller in characterization. Not only the protagonist, but many of the minor characters are fleshed out well beyond the norm, which gives rise to many sub-threads or stories". I was well chuffed with that.

You can read the full review here.

Fun with ammonia

You may have heard the comedic feminist epigram: "a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle."

Well... fish may not need a bicycle, but they do need a cycle. The period, in the life of a new aquarium, during which the biological filter is established, growing enough nitrifying bacteria to convert the waste products from the fish (ammonia) into still-toxic nitrite, and then much safer nitrate. While this is happening, the tank is said to be cycling, a process that is complete when ammonia and nitrite levels fall to zero (or as close as makes no difference) because you have enough bacteria to eat it all, and nitrate levels gradually rise until the next partial water change.

You can cycle a tank with a small number of fish, which is how we started off the biological filter in the BiUbe, but this is stressful for those fish as they're subjected to higher levels of ammonia and nitrite than is best for them, so this time round I was hoping to do a "fishless cycle."

A fairly easy concept to grasp but more complicated in its execution, the fishless cycle basically involves introducing chemical ammonia into a tank for the bacteria to feed on (and starting the colony off with some bacteria from an existing tank if possible) and waiting until you've grown a colony large enough to handle the waste from your fish, at which point the fish can be introduced. In practice this is a bit of a juggling act because (a) you don't know how much ammonia your colony of fish is generating and (b) you have to guess that amount and then add it daily to keep the bacteria fed until the fish arrive. It's also important to do regular testing to monitor the colony's progress. Too much ammonia can kill off the bacteria and put you back to square one.

The first challenge was finding a source of pure ammonia. Or ammonium hydroxide I should more properly say. Most of the bleach available from supermarkets is contaminated with perfumes and surfactants to make it more acceptable as a cleaning agent. Any of that is not good for the inside of an aquarium. After a short search we eventually found a local shop (of the kind we usually refer to as "plastic man" because they sell a huge array of plastic tubs, buckets and bowls) with a stock of Kleen Off - pure ammonium hydroxide. Result!

It's never as easy as that though is it? The bottle had no indication of concentration, so to arrive at the required ammonia levels (4 or 5 ppm) in our 130-litre tank I had to do some experimenting. I'd found a handy guide to fishless cycling that talked about adding "a few drops at a time", testing, and repeating until the numbers came up, so armed with a jug containing 2 litres of treated water, my bottle of ammonia and my testing kit, I made a start. First with 3 drops, then 7, then another 10, 20, 50. Pretty soon I was up to 200 drops in my 2 litres and the test phial had barely shifted from the weakest colour (0.05 ppm) to the next blob (0.1ppm). Pretty soon the water was looking pretty syrupy with ammonia and I was approaching the point where I'd be adding the equivalent of half a bottle to the tank every day. That can't be right! (I thought). Slowly the reality dawned on me - the ammonia was bleaching the dye in the test kit.

I think we'll be cycling this new tank with some fish from the BiUbe!

FuruTankee

Hot on the heels of yesterday's post, where I claimed "KaraTankee" might mean empty tank, we have FuruTankee. Because Google translate is my friend, and tells me that the Japanese for full is "furu".

The only thing it's not full of, is fish. We have plants, we have rocks (the black pebbles that have recently seen service in the BiUbe, the spare piece of ocean rock that I bought to address the acidity problem, but didn't have room for, and a nifty little moulded pile of rubble from those nice people at Fluval), we have a heater, and we have an assembled filter with its input strainer in place.

It all hums along very nicely. Armed with her 'A' Level physics - far more recent than mine - Nat calculates it will take about 15 hours to heat the water up to 24°C. That'll be tomorrow then.

That's when the process of "cycling" the tank will start in earnest, with the addition of a tasty mix of ammonia, old filter squeezings and a bit of rock from the old tank. Yum!

KaraTankee

Well, you know, KaraTe is "empty hand". KaraOke is "empty orchestra". So KaraTankee is "empty tank."

Yep, the new aquarium! Collected from the supplier Tuesday evening, cabinet assembled yesterday and the tank washed out and put in position, and you might just be able to make out a layer of "black glass" gravel at the bottom (so strictly speaking I guess it doesn't qualify as KaraTankee any more).

We bought a bunch of new (artificial) plants too, so they'll be going in tomorrow along with 130 litres of Manchester's finest tap water. We're lucky we still have some actualleh, after yesterday's burst water main. So far I've not done much else apart from wash all the bits of the filter. And my hands, obviously. Very important that, as the set up instructions make clear. Item 2: "Wash your hands and arms. It is very important to remove dirt, moisturiser and other impurities."

Not much chance of there being any moisturiser on my arms. I think the last time I used that was when we went to Greece in 2005 (God, that's seven years ago. SEVEN YEARS!).

The subject of washed hands comes up again later in the instruction booklet, under Fortnightly Tank Maintenance:
"What you will need: A bucket, gravel cleaner, towel, water conditioner, filter supplement and clean hands. All items are available from your local Aqua One retailer."

That's good to know.
"Hello, is that Urmston Aquatics? I'd like a pair of clean hands please. Mine are just too mucky."

The snow is falling

Writing is often referred to as a solitary activity. Even though you may choose to undertake it in company, by  its very nature unless you're writing collaboratively you're obliged to spend a lot of time inside your own head. That's not conducive to social intercourse.

If anything, as a self-published author, it's even worse. No agent to engage with, no editor, no publisher, no cover designer, no... well... you get the idea. And while you're engaged in all that editing, proof reading, polishing, formatting (for Kindle, etc), and spending time wondering what meta-writing to put out there on Facebook and Twitter to promote your work, and what NOT to put out there so as to avoid totally pissing off your mates by blathering on about it the whole time, there's not an awful lot of time left for yer actual writing.

And then one day you find, as Pink Floyd famously did, ten years have got behind you. Only it's not quite ten years since I finished War of Nutrition. It's "only" four. Or one-and-a-half if you count the rewrite (which you should, because that's the one that eventually got published).

So, ever conscious of the passage of time, I've been trying to decide what to write next. And then, having chosen what I thought was the strongest contender from the list of two or three dozen ideas ("log lines") I've assembled over the years, I've been trying to get my head around exactly how I can turn it into a novel-length story.

After several months (intermittent!) work, I'd fleshed out quite a rich world - two worlds actually, since the story moves from one to the other - in which the action could take place, together with a fairly strong (I thought) cast of characters. Trouble was, at this stage, I didn't know what they were all going to do. I mean, I had the germ of a story idea, but beyond that I started to get a bit bogged down in exactly what all these people in this marvellous new world were going to do that was interesting enough to make you all keep reading.

Breaking out of the inside of my head for a while to talk this over with Blythe during one of our journeys back from Yorkshire, she introduced me to Snowflake. I'll just take a sip of tea while you get over your surprise that I'd never heard of it. Sorry, but no, I hadn't. But it sounded like just the ticket to get me over my hump. When I was writing WoN I worked to a template that was ideally suited to a thriller, but this new work is a science fiction/fantasy fusion, and that old template didn't fit. The Snowflake method is open-ended enough to suit pretty much any genre, so I thought I might give it a go.

Today I finished Step 3. OK, much of the work for the first three steps I'd already done while prepping the world and the characters, but that aside working within the framework has already even at this early stage thrown up some great new ideas and directions, and vastly strengthened my view of the characters, who they are, what they can do, and what they will be able to do by the end of the story. It's fair to say that so far, Snowflake is working out pretty well.

Our new aquarium... prototype

During the long project dubbed the "new new lounge" last year, we debated what to do with our fish. We've now had them three years, and I think I can claim that the spectres of my past fishy disasters have been exorcised. We recently discovered another THREE fry in the tank, happily swimming around what has become the "nursery" area (in and around the ocean rock I introduced to solve the acidity problem) which brings to a total of ten the number of cherry barbs we've bred in those three years. Must be doing something right.

But the impending move into the new room gave us the opportunity to introduce a new aquarium. The BiUbe has served us very well and is a doddle to maintain, but it has limitations. At only 35 litres it was pretty much at capacity with the cherries and the ocellated barbs we added about eighteen months ago. Probably over stocked now, if anything, after all the breeding. So the fish we have don't have a lot of room, there's not much scope for adding more plants or rocks or anything to make the tank more interesting for them, and there's no room for extra species. Hence the debate. Were we happy with what we've got, or did we want something new and if so, what?

Armed with my newly built confidence after three years of successful fishy husbandry I was keen to expand. Nikki was too, but had a concern that anything new wasn't TOO big, and wouldn't dominate the new room which she wanted to keep fairly sparsely furnished (despite the - albeit temporary - fact that it is currently home to one more sofa than we actually want. We're hoping eBay or Gumtree will shortly come to our rescue on that score).

After much debate and more than a few visits to local aquarium suppliers and not-so-local websites, we settled on a model. But Nikki retained a slight niggle that it was too big. Too tall. Too dominating. So with the cabinet and tank dimensions off the web and a ready supply of eBay storage and packaging materials, I built the above mock-up. OK, OK, it's not perfect. The top half isn't the right width and the whole thing is too deep, BUT... it's the right height and the right width at the base, so it gave us an idea. Enough of an idea for Nikki to give the green light. I'll be ordering it today :0)

(For a photo of the real thing, here's one on a supplier's website in the Black Ash cabinet we'll be going for to match the TV stand. Ironically the manufacturer's site doesn't have such a good pic)

Incidentally the small green fish visible in the picture above isn't part of our new stock. It's one of the toys Hobo brought with him from his Mum's house, and remains one of his favourites even though it's lost a fin and is looking very tatty these days.

Why we called him Hobo

What with one thing and another it's been well over a year since I posted a cat update. The last time a photo of our lad appeared on here, we didn't even have him yet.

When he arrived we decided to call him Harley, but even as we were making that decision my little voice was insisting it would be better to wait awhile and let his name suggest itself to us without our help. And, as always with messages from the little voice, it was bang on. It turned out he wasn't a Harley at all.

Not half an hour after he arrived, he'd chewed through the telephone cable. Luckily it was the power supply rather than the signal cable, so easily mended (and subsequently wound around the base of a table lamp to keep it out of temptation's way). We had to keep him away from any similar damage - under desks where PC cables abound, and behind the TV being the main sources of "fun" - for at least six months before he was old enough to get bored with cables and seek out other entertainment.

But right from the off, he showed a definite preference for sitting in bins (when he wasn't pulling their contents out), and for sleeping in cardboard boxes, plastic carrier bags, or rolled up newspapers. So we had to call him Hobo.

Here he is in a favourite sleeping place - the cardboard box under my desk where we dump old envelopes, junk mail and other papers on their way to the recycling. Whenever it's less than half full he likes to curl up in there where it's safe, warm and fairly quiet. He's never far away from people and follows us from room to room even though he's not all that keen on being cuddled or stroked. Maybe he'll grow into that, but he's very sociable even so.

In the year we've had him he's learned to stop jumping on the fish, walking on my keyboard (he had a knack of hitting EXACTLY the right key combination to shut down my PC), or parading across the table while we're eating, but he'll still chance a quick strop on the bedhead if he thinks we're asleep, and since we moved into the new lounge he's been very keen to try and find a way up onto the mantelpiece. And he's grown too big to sleep comfortably on my lap :0(

He's still generally as cute as a cute thing though, so just this morning we've been talking about the possibility of getting him a companion. Watch this space.

The eRoute to eSuccess

When I first started writing War of Nutrition (so long ago it even had a different title), self-publishing was frowned upon by "real" authors. It was a route for amateurs and, more importantly, it was the route that once taken could never lead you back to "proper" publishing. Real publishers and agents, it was said, would never touch anyone tarnished with the shame of self-publishing.

What a difference twelve years makes. So what happened? Lots of things:

Computers and the Internet.

Of course the Internet existed in 2000, but there were far fewer of us on it, and outside of the US most of us accessed it over dial-up. Slow and clunky, yes, but even back then it was starting to connect us in exciting and previously unimaginable ways. One of those burgeoning ways was a new route for authors to reach their readers, but much more than that the Internet provided a faster, easier and more accessible research tool. I can't begin to think of how I'd have learned enough protein science, or geography, or helicopter piloting (all of which are essential to the plot of WoN) before the Internet, but it would certainly have involved hours and hours in public libraries and in my case would probably have prevented the book ever being written.

The Recession

While traditional publishers were at first bemoaning, then begrudgingly accepting and then (almost but not quite) embracing the self-publishing revolution, the world plunged into recession. There was no longer as much money to risk on unheard of new authors (there never had been much), and scarce agent and publisher resources were focused on known quantities and guaranteed profit-makers. If you're an Ian Rankin or a Stephen King, no problem. Otherwise getting published became an even less likely proposition (and the odds never were that good).

Kindle

(Other e-readers are available) Obviously ePublishing could never have taken off in the absence of a platform to ePublish to. In the vanguard, Kindle offered not only a device but also a (fairly) simple route for authors to go it alone. Its success has been well documented, followed up in short order by other variants by the same and other suppliers, and eBooks recently overtook hardcopy sales in at least one marketplace. Although there still are, and will continue to be for many years, some dyed-in-the-wool lovers of paper, it's inevitable that these will decline as the generations turn and in a decade or two will be looked upon with the same gentle forbearance currently reserved for lovers of vinyl, 8-track, Betamax or more recently HD-DVD.

Naturally, it's not all good news. Easy access to self-publishing has removed many of the gatekeepers, and there are easily as many deluded authors as there are deluded auditionees on The X Factor. All their friends and family have told them what a good writer they are, they've had this cracking idea for a story which they've knocked up in a few weeks. No, they don't know how to spell- or grammar-check and have no idea what a copy editor is, but why does that matter when they're only a few clicks away from seeing their name on Amazon's bestseller list? With several thousand new works being published every day for e-reader platforms, consumers of fiction have to plough through mountains of dubious quality output to find something worth reading. So ironically, now that it's easier to publish, it's harder to find something that was worth publishing, let alone is worth reading. Not surprising readers tend to stick with what (and who) they know. Unless you're prepared to spend hours online on Facebook and Twatter or in Amazon forums and the like, the chances of you drumming up a readership beyond your list of Facebook friends are slim to none. And even interesting THEM in your creation is hard work half the time.

Not that having those gatekeepers in place was necessarily all that much better. What? You've never read a bad book? Never reached the final page and thought "God. That was *crap* - how did it ever get published"? Lucky you. During my 100-Theme Writing Challenge last year, I had the opportunity to explore reasons why in this post. It's depressing. But like so much in life if it was easy, everyone would be doing it. In the end it's probably better to write your book because you want to write it, not because you're expecting to get rich off the back of it. Very few people get that lucky.

(Originally started writing this in Feb 2012 shortly after War of Nutrition was published for Kindle. Hard to believe almost a year has passed.)

Finishing off at the back

Last time anyone on here saw a photo of our imminent new deck, it looked like the last photo in this post, which was the position after three days' work. Unbelievably, the next ten working days saw the whole job finished, including laying circular patios (two of them) and linking path, fitting a pond, casting a base for a greenhouse, (re)building the entire garden wall at the back, erecting about 50 metres of new fence, lining the old fence to match the new wood, installing a water feature, cabling everything up including various lights, laying a lawn, building two new gates, an arbour seat and two sets of pyramid-shaped trellis, and planting.

At the end of which, the new deck looks like this:
In the almost two months since it was built, I think it's been dry for something like five hours. I'm hopeful that we have chance to enjoy it once or twice this year, but at present it's covered in frost.

You should just be able to make out in that picture the clever planters that the garden designer included on the left and right borders. On the "attached" side, the planter is also backed up with a 5-foot screen so that we get some privacy on the deck. On the other side, the planter forms the edge of the deck, next to the path.

I'll save more photos for now, while the planting gets established and the year gets a little older.

There's only so many times you can say...

..."Nearly There."

But we really are. The "new new lounge" has been occupied since just before Christmas, and there's been quite a lot of progress since we were floored at the end of November.

That new radiator we were waiting for was fitted (and didn't leak), and also in this picture you can see our two new Stressless™ recliners that were delivered on Saturday. They came without hard floor protection so in the end we had to bring the carpet offcut down again for that end of the room, which will be there until the specialised sticky felt pads arrive in March.

The two other observations made obvious by this photo are that we're still waiting for the new curtains (probably worth a post in their own right as it's quite a long story) and replacement sofa (on order, due in about two weeks). Meanwhile the old brown leather sofa from the other room is performing seating duty. Well, I say old, but we've only had it a tad over four years. Nevertheless it'll be on Gumtree pretty soon. Maybe even later today.

This angle gives you a good view of the rug (yes, there's a purple theme developing :0) - it relieves the grey) and my top Christmas pressie from the lovely Nikki which has yet to be used but will undoubtedly also be the subject of future blogging. This photo also reveals that we're still undecided on a new ceiling light - we'd like it to make a statement but haven't found one that speaks loudly enough yet - and we need some kind of console table or sideboard or something for the right hand side of the fireplace.

At the other end of the room things are almost complete...

with the addition of a shiny new Panasonic TV mounted on a gorgeous BDI Avion Noir cabinet in black oak, complete with Arena cantilever bracket. This excellent piece of kit is the absolute dog's danglers in TV cabinets. The build quality is the best I've ever seen and the whole thing sits on heavy duty rubber wheels that allow it to be rolled out easily for access to the cabling, which has proved necessary on more than one occasion since first installation. Our original HDMI cables weren't long enough and our digital aerial signal needed a boost. And then I had to recable the BOSE system so it would work properly with the new kit. Probably also worth noting that both the BDI cabinet and the Stressless recliners have been bought from the proceeds of just over 18 months' eBaying activities and so were, essentially, "free."

The only thing still missing from this end of the room is a new aquarium, which we're still debating, so not quite there yet but... um... nearly.

I used to be apathetic...

...but these days I just can't be bothered.

We had a lovely weekend - the one just gone - spending time with some good friends who were in town to attend Corriefest at the Lass O'Gowrie. Friday night, a double-handed episode from the 1970s re-enacted in the pub by a bunch of really talented actors (some of whom look uncannily similar to the original characters they portray, but ALL of whom had their mannerisms off to a tee), followed by a full day programme of events on Saturday featuring actors, a famous scriptwriter and casting director, and the showing of some "lost" Coronation Street-related TV footage. It was all Corrie gold, and a really enjoyable series of events.

In among all this, the subject of our blogs came up. This one, and the one our friend writes. We had both connected our blogs up to Facebook through a clever widget that copies each blog post into a Facebook post, which seemed like a good idea at the time. Unfortunately it turned out that for both of us, there was an unexpected downside that had hit us squarely between the eyes.

Writing here, on a personal blog with a small but friendly audience who know what to expect, and come here to read exactly that, feels comfortable. Not in a bullish "it's my blog and I'll write what I like" kind of way, but - well - it IS my blog, and I write about anything I find interesting, whether it's worldly comments on the state of the nation, or using a potato to prevent leaks. But opening the blog up to facebook, where an audience of "friends of friends" not only could be several thousand people but also is likely to comprise mainly those who would think "what on EARTH is he on about now" felt distinctly... less comfortable. We ended up feeling inhibited about the topics we could write about, because there was a kind of implied impetus, or requirement, for them to be somehow more interesting.

It's all in the mind, this, and we both recognised that. Even so, it was coincidentally how we both felt about it. In my case, I was quite happy doing the 100 Themes Writing Challenge and having them posted to Facebook because it was literary. It was "proper" writing. Not just random stuff about the garden, or the cat, or the decorating.

My friend unlinked her blog from Facebook this week and I unlinked mine yesterday, so now I feel liberated from the (probably totally imagined) expectations of people I don't know, and I'm sincerely hoping I'll get back to more regular updates. Lots has been happening both inside and out. And there's a whole weekend coming up for me to write about it :o)

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.