OK, so it’s just me going on a summer holiday, but I got to sing the song in my head and that’s all that matters 😛

Once again it’s time for me to bid you all adieu for a little while. At least this time it’s not because I dying of some mysterious mojo-sapping lurgy

When I tell you that this is the first proper holiday I will have had since 2001, I hope you will appreciate how much I am relishing the prospect of two whole weeks where I don’t have to work, or study, or do anything other than things that amuse me. The first couple of days I am going back to the Homestead to spend time with the Triffid Tamer (my lovely Mum) then I am off to Guernsey for a week.

This all has the glorious side effect of making me internet-less for all of that time. Partly I have no choice in the matter: the places I am going have no internet access (the Homestead is still on dial-up and that is just too painful to count and who knows what the hotel has to offer). But even if the places I was going did have internet access, I wouldn’t use it. I want two weeks where I am not chained to my inbox, blog, and a gazillion other websites. I want two weeks of unhooked peace and quiet where I can wash the stress from my job out of my brain, unkink my back from the horrors of my office chair, and maybe even get some writing done.

Yes, writing. Not blog writing, not short story writing, but a full on, mulit-thousand-word book/novel/fiction-piece which I have had brewing in my head for years now. I have had this entire world, sitting there, populated with people who want me to tell their stories, but I just haven’t had the umph to do anything more than write snippets and glimpses here and there. Finally I think I’ve got to the place where I’m capable of doing them justice on the page.

I at least owe it to them to try.

You see, I have this ambivalent attitude towards writing. I love it and do it constantly, even when it’s just in my head. At the same time it bugs me and haunts me. I need space and a relatively awake brain to write well. Writing whilst stressed I can just about manage after a fashion, but writing whilst exhausted I can’t. Work being what it is, I’ve been averaging 40 hour weeks for the past ten months, and they’ve all be frantic and stressed 40 hour weeks to boot. Yes, I know that it could be a lot worse and I’m not complaining. There is no way you could say I was bored in my job and that’s a wonderful thing to be able to say, but it does mean that when I get home I barely have the mental energy to make a cup of tea, boil some pasta and collapse in front of SG:1, let alone write the next great Sci-Fi/Fantasy trilogy. *

So I’m taking two weeks to go into full hermit mode – just me, (hopefully) good weather, a quiet beach, a pile of notebooks, and the PocketCalculator. At the end of it I want to have something approaching at least a first draft, but I’m not kidding myself. It’s been seven years to get this far, I don’t think two weeks is going to make that much difference. But it will be nice to give it a go.

Whilst I’m gone, things are understandably going to go a bit quiet around the place. I’ve asked Neko and Moose to keep an eye on things, rescue comments from moderation, kill the spam and things like that. They may guest-post, they may not. It depends if inspiration strikes them, though both have said they will do a Sunday Roast to keep things ticking over.

I do also thoroughly recommend that you keep an eye on Tumbleweeds as I will be twittering on occasion, and that compiles them all into a pretty, readable format.

I will be back in Meadow Towers and firmly jacked in to my virtual existence on the 31st of August.

Till then, Tally Ho, Pip Pip and Bob’s your uncle 🙂

Endnotes:
Don’t worry, it’s not a trilogy. I have this distaste for everything being in trilogies – just because it’s a genre book, it does NOT mean it has to fit into three, damn it!

Hi all, Neko here.

I’m babysitting the blog for a few days whilst our illustrious leader is away from broadband 🙂

This is really just to make sure the editing permissions are working OK, and to give you all fair warning!

Cas said I should introduce myself… I guess the best thing is to head over to my blog on the link above, that should give you some idea. I’m a fellow computing/ archaeology nut- I met Cas at uni, and we are frequent co-conspiritors of late, on diverse matters.

I don’t share her obsession with penguins, but it does not wierd me out! I might even try to write you all a roast on Sunday, there are some things that have caught me in the news….

I’m mainly going to moderate comments and zap spam though, so please just carry on as normal!

I want to tell you a story about how golf balls changed the world

The story starts on an inner city housing estate, twenty years ago. Pretty much any image you’ve got in your head right now about “inner city housing estates” is probably doing an adequate job at describing the scene. Deprivation. Vandalism. Hostility. Fear.

Then in one house at one end of the estate, one of the residents takes a chance and talks to his neighbour. They share a joke over the fence. Let their kids play together. Give the other a hand when a car fails to start on a cold winter morning. Provide a friendly cup of tea when a day hasn’t gone so good.

Fast forward to today.

Now that one end of the estate is a nice place to live. There’s little crime there. People talk to each other and they celebrate their successes and mourn their losses as a community.

One man looks beyond his street however and sees that, really, things are still pretty dire one block over and he knows there is a way to go.

As he looks out his front window most mornings, he sees a young lad walking down the street carrying a golf club. The suspicious part of him could find it easy to think what the curtain twitchers think – he’s a yob, a trouble maker, just out looking for something – someone – to bash up. He knows the kid has a reputation but few kids on the estate haven’t got a reputation. So he refuses to listen to that part of his mind and pops down the local sports store and lays out £2 on a pack of four golf balls.

Next time the young lad walks down his street, the man steps out of his front door and calls him over. “You like golf, right?”
“Love it!” the young lad’s face lights up. “I go down the playground every day and practice”.
The man hands him the pack of golf balls. “Take these. I’m not going to get the use out of them…”

And the young man walks off down the street with a grin on his face and goes to the playground to practice with balls he hasn’t had to nick off anybody. The next time he walks up the street, he gives a wave to the man. Then he stops and has a chat one morning. Later on, he brings his father over to say hello.

Now the next street over is getting to be a nicer place to live. The people talk to each other and they celebrate their successes and mourn their losses as a community.

The man looks out of his front door and sees some kids from three blocks over running down the street with a patched up football. He goes down the local sports shop and lays out £2 for a new ball.

Next time the young lads run down the street, he steps out of his front door and calls them over.
“You like football, right? My grandchildren don’t play with this any more, why don’t you have it?”

True story.