Monthly Archives: November 2007

Let the dreams begin again

I have a dream and that is something that is really rather scary for me to admit. For the longest time I haven’t had any dreams. I made a few plans but always I opted for the path of least resistance and sort of drifted through my late teens and early twenties.

The last time I can remember having a dream, a real, honest to god, burning lamp of a dream that focused my entire being was when I was twelve and determined to be a vet. For as far back as I can remember being focused on these things (I’m not counting childish desires to be a princess or walk on the moon) I wanted to work with animals. I was always a practical child so the dream of becoming a dog breeder was put to one side and I focused all my energy on getting into veterinary school.

This is something that is very hard to do in the UK as there are only six universities that do the course and you need to be freakishly bright to even stand a chance. Well, I am freakishly bright as it turns out, so why the hell not? I won my scholarship to Hogwarts which meant I was best placed to get the best (and most appropriate) GSCEs. I got spankingly good grades in them, which meant I could go and do the A levels I wanted to do. Or rather, the A levels I needed to do, but as want/need were one and the same at this point, I didn’t mind doing the three sciences.

I even enjoyed it.

But thank whatever made me choose a fourth (Archaeology) as a way to leaven the mix of Biology, Chemistry and Physics, because I didn’t make it into any of my four choices for university. I’m not saying I failed at interview stage either. Oh no. I wasn’t even invited to interview.

Which sucked some what.

What sucked more was that my best friend got an interview from all four universities, got an offer from two, and is (as I type) a practicing vet. But I’m not bitter.

I don’t really remember much of the rest of that year at college. I know I finished the year and I still got good grades, and at some point I made the decision to go to do Archaeology somewhere (leading to the true story of choosing my undergraduate university by sticking a pin in a list). But how or when that decision got made I have no clear idea even to this day.

With the complete failure of my veterinary dream – and, I will admit, a healthy dollup of severe depression for several years – I just started coasting. Get a sparklingly brilliant BSc? Cool. Go do an MSc somewhere. In what? Well, you’ve enjoyed Archaeology so far, why not continue? Can’t decide what to research – there could be worse things than something your supervisor mentions over a cup of tea. Need a job? Work for the local authority because they pay reasonably well and the interview to get on the temp pool wasn’t exactly stringent.

Even the job I am doing at the moment, which I enjoy immensely and give everything to, just kinda… happened. Bright Meadow kinda… happened. Everything for the past five years has just kinda… happened, without any input on my part.

I’ve enjoyed it all and really couldn’t think of things I would rather have been doing along the way, but by no stretch of the imagination has any of it been part of a dream.

Till now.

Now my brain has hooked onto the whole London/publishing/editing thing and refuses to let go. It excites me. I am starting to plan for it. I am starting to dream about it.

Which scares ten kinds of shit out of me because the things I dream of, plan for, and look forward to have a disastrous tendency to fall flat on their face and (on one particularly memorable occasion) have even ended up with me in hospital.

At the same time, the very fact I can dream again is a brilliant sign.

I do not want to be one of those people who coasts through life. I cannot be happy as that person. I talk to people with no drive or desire to change their lot on a day-to-day basis, and at some level I just do not understand that. One of my friends recently decided not to go to university to pursue his teaching dream, choosing instead to get a temp job doing something or other menial that doesn’t use his brain. I accept not everyone is suited to university, but I cannot understand someone who lets their dream float on by because it might be “a little hard”.

I am being judgmental and I shouldn’t because I love the boy dearly, but it escapes me. I don’t understand settling for something. If I am being very honest here, I am afraid of settling for something. I can very easily see myself ten years down the line, settled in a job similar to what I am doing now, sunk into the malaise that seems to pervade long-term employees of my organisation. Not that they mind it, really. It’s easy. They’ve settled. They’ve given up on the dream.

When you act on your dreams you have to step outside what is safe. You run the risk of getting hurt in ways you can’t even imagine. Yes, I am scared it will all go horribly wrong, but I’ve tried easy. I’ve tried safe. Safe and easy bore me. Give me something that stretches me. Give me something to reach for. In my dreams I shine – Heaven help me, but I’ve got my ability to dream back. Don’t let me watch the opportunity fly past my office cubicle window, please?

Sunday Roast: this is not a Kindle review

After last week’s fairly mammoth Roast, this weeks is small but perfectly formed (like myself).

So I started writing the Roast and made the mistake of starting with the news that Amazon has released it’s Kindle book reader. I got more than a little side tracked into a ten paragraph long rant about what I want from an digital book reader and realised that perhaps that is best left for a post all of its own. Something for y’all to look forward too.

My certificate from Edexcel arrived yesterday to formally prove that I got an A in both my English AS and English A level this summer. Go me. But it doesn’t come as much of a surprise that A-levels are going to be scrutinised for being too easy. No one should be able to get 100% in an exam, even me!

I’m guilty of it myself – thinking that because I have an internet connection and a handful of people read my blog, that I am a ‘writer’ (I do try to disabuse myself of the illusion on a regular basis, but somehow it keeps creeping back in) – RU Sirius asks is the Net good for Writers? by interviewing 10 of them. It makes interesting reading.

Because you might have missed the link, squirreled away as it was in the comments on last week’s roast (and if there was ever a reason to read comments, it’s the knowledge that you might be missing out on more links), I bring you stuff about stuff, another mighty fine tumblr, this time from jeremyet.

It is about getting excited about connections, rather than nervous

So my review of a Penguin Classic is live. Go comment 🙂

I don’t care how bad Van Helsing was – any sequel that has James Purefoy looking this dark and brooding has got to be good.

Cloverfield – looking good.

Parental Quote of the Year

I am in semi-hermit mode at the moment. I know I should be writing things for your delectation, but somehow the muse is not descending. Rather than have you all staring at a blank blog for days on end, I will share with you something from a conversation I just had with my lovely mother (Curly Durly).

The conversation worked it’s way round to dating, men and prospective son-in-laws as these conversations can do. I think I’ve already established elsewhere that my family aren’t exactly run-of-the-mill. Curly Durly tends to take it to the next level, especially when trying to convince her ever loving daughter to get out of the house and live a little…

Comment number one that had me in hysterics:
“Who cares what he looks like darling? He could be dynamite between the sheets!”

A gem which was rapidly followed by her exhorting me to, quite simply, sleep around some more:
“But window shopping is the most fun! And you just have to try before you buy!”

My mother, ladies and gentlemen. It’s amazing I turned out as respectable as I did.

Sunday Roast: Not a lot of men can carry off a decorative vegetable

I have been taken to task this week for not writing more posts here at Bright Meadow. I refuse to feel guilty but I am still going to proffer up an excuse, for all the good it will do me. There is a fine line between when I can and cannot write – I can write when I am physically tired (some of my best stuff gets written then) but I cannot write when I am emotionally tired. I am very much the latter at the moment for reasons I will bore you with only if you buy me a pint or shoot me an email.

On the whole, this week has been remarkably un-eventful. Or was, until Moose went to leave the flat at lunch time and was met with a flood of biblical proportions. You see, we had a mammoth city-wide powercut in Southampton during the week and this must have fritzed the electro-magnet on the skylight above our front door. Only no one on the floor noticed till this morning when the storms over night caused it to open and lock in that position… Picture me knocking on doors to see if anyone had a step-ladder (no one); Moose balancing on a chair with a mop handle to try and force it shut (unsuccessful); and then me ringing every number we have for the property management to try and get someone to come out and close the bloody thing. As I type we’re waiting, with fingers crossed and the hall floor covered in newspapers, for the promised engineer to appear.

And on that positive note, on with the Roast!

The Guardian points to a recent study that shows we’re spending 12 hours a week online. I won’t embarrass myself by calculating how much time I spend online a week, but it is significantly more than that! I just love the stat that says 81% of people sent an email “at least once a month”… At work it is not unheard of for me to send at least one every five minutes!

Are you aware of your internet shopping rights?

Continuing a theme I have noticed that no Simpson sketch is without parallel in the great US of A, a man shoots himself whilst changing a tyre.

Since the Saints are in such financial difficulty at the moment, perhaps they should look to some American investment?

I’m not going to get into the whole debate on the issue, but I do find it interesting that UN panel has voted a moratorium on executions.

In a conversation with Lady P at work last week, she mentioned this Guardian article and mentioned how true she found it. She used Facebook etc but used them in a very limited fashion, mainly because she is not comfortable with the overlapping circles of her life knowing so much about her (she used her sister-in-law as an example). She asked how I sort it all out and keep the online/offline divide clear. My answer was that I really do not have that particular divide. I have a personal/professional divide to a certain degree, and there is a divide between public/private, but it isn’t overt – followers of Cas all over the web get a picture of my life that is enough to build up a fairly accurate picture of “me”, but there is stuff they will never know about. To the same extent, my friends ‘offline’ see different sides of me if they do/don’t read Bright Meadow. I couldn’t explain it coherently to Lady P and I’m not explaining it very well now, but in my head there is one line that is very clear: if you have my phone number or if you don’t have my phone number. Not having my phone number doesn’t mean I don’t like you, but it does mean you’re probably not one of the close circle of people I’ll turn to if/when I’m having a nervous breakdown!

I have a tumblog of my own but I don’t actively post to it, preferring instead to use it as a way non-RSS fiends can easily keep an eye on new stuff that I’ve posted from Flickr, Twitter and Bright Meadow. Tam on the other hand, has a kick-ass tumblog in the shape of espresso. I don’t know how she does it, but practically every entry is oozing eye-candy and gorgeousness. I had linked to seven different posts then figured it was just easier to direct you to the main page!

Continuing a long tradition of lazyness, why rant about something someone else has already ranted about? I will add that I don’t have a MySpace (and only look at it once in a blue moon to stalk/oggle the EDLO) . I am very reticent to add apps to my Facebook. I have a Flickr app that pulls in my Flickr photos so I don’t have to upload them two places, there is a Twitter app that pulls in my tweets, and I have a FluffFriend because it was a penguin and I just couldn’t resist! I did add SuperPoke and by god I wish I hadn’t – drunkenly throwing chickens at people is hardly classy behaviour! I use Facebook to connect to people. In fact, I had my very first instance of meeting someone down a club and just going “oh, find me on Facebook through X’s page” (where X was a mutual FoaF) just a few weeks back. And that’s pretty much it. So stop biting me people and asking me to answer questions!

And keeping with the mild Facebook theme of this Roast, Facebook now allows companies to create profiles. Like many others, I’m on the fence about this. Facebook is about people, my friends, not about big companies asking you to be their “fan”. On the other hand, it’s pretty much expected now for companies to have blogs and to interact to some degree with their clients. So I’ve become a fan of Penguin (yes, I know, predictable 😛 ) in order to see how this fan thing works out. I can think of worse ways to keep up with what new books are coming up, though I’m still reticent about how they’re starting to encroach on my places.

Damn it, that wasn’t exactly the coherent argument I was going for, but what can you expect whilst I’m waiting for Noah to come rescue me from the flood that is my front hall?!

It turns out I write soft porn. Rarely has a comment had me laughing so hard over my morning cup of tea, so the site is worthy of a link if only for that. But on top of that, Andy does take the time to link to a few of his top blogs. Two on the list stood out:
Random Acts Of Reality – a blog by an E.M.T working for the London Ambulance Service
and
Caroline Middlebrook’s piece on thanking your Stumblers. Now I don’t use StumbleUpon for no reason other than it just hasn’t fitted into my e-life (though never say never), but Caroline’s points can also be used towards your everyday readers and commenters. It can take thirty seconds to respond to a comment someone has left or to reply to an email with a simple “thank you”, but that response will garner you more good faith than you realise and will make you stand out.

Marvel Comics are putting their archives online. For a cost and I haven’t researched whether they are DRM’d or not (chances are they are) but still, this bodes well for more comics to go online. *puts on begging face* Fables, maybe?

I don’t as a rule trust book recommendations as they just have a tendency to disappoint. If I am going to go on recommendations, I tend to go with ones from people I know really well (who won’t be upset if I hate the book!) or from authors I quietly worship. It’s quite obvious that William Gibson fits into the latter category, but his write-up of Not Quite Dead certainly made me prick up my ears and add it to my wishlist. Well, Christmas is coming up and I struck gold with last years wildcard of I Capture The Castle…

We all love xkcd, right? So don’t be surprised if I turn up in a t-shirt.

Driving down the A303 used to be a major part of my childhood as it was the route to most of our holiday grounds and my grandparents. To this day I have strong affection for certain stretches of the road as they bring back happy memories. Though I’ve grown up with the landscape and have dragged the CCM around it a time or three, it’s always been nigh-on impossible to see the landscape as a whole beyond just Stonehenge itself, even though my finely tuned Archaeologists senses tell me it is so, and even harder to get it across as I do my best/worst as an impromptu tour guide. So bless Tom for slaving over a hot processor and bringing us this virtual rendering of the landscape.
(As an aside, there’s one particular part of the rendering where you look down the cursus where I had an “oooh!” moment and just knew that was a perfect setting for part of my story. Who said Archaeology had no relevance in the real world 😉 )

Turns out that Bright Meadow is worth $31,620 – who would pay that amount of money escapes me but it’s nice to know that I’ve not been wasting my time here. (Don’t start to lecture me on the invalidity of such calculations, I know that that figure is just pie in the sky. It’s just nice to dream).

On ‘paper’, the Amazon Kindle has most of what I’m looking for in an e-reader, but does it have to be so butt ugly?

Tired of the QWERTY layout? Why not switch of Dvorak? I will admit I’m tempted I just haven’t taken the plunge yet. If someone else wants to go there first, I’d appreciate it.

When Icons go to War

Just two movies caught my eye this week:
Persepolis
P.S. I Love You – I almost didn’t link to this till I heard giggles from Moose’s room the other day and it turned out she was appreciating Gerard Butler’s awful accent as much as I was.

And that is me once more done for the day. Enjoy. Don’t enjoy. It’s entirely up to you 🙂 Don’t forget that the comments field is always open – I know there’s stuff out there in on the Tubes that I’ve missed. Share it!

Excerpt 1

Because he asked so nicely, this is for Josh. It’s unfinished. I’m still not sure where it fits into the whole picture (though from the character interaction we’re talking later on in the story) and I’m still not totally convinced I’ve separated the two world-views out enough, but enjoy…
p.s. – any comments on how art mirrors life, and I will take my revenge by eviscerating you in fiction. I know that I use my writing to work things through. I don’t need my nose rubbed in it :p

She sat there, watching quietly as Luk stirred the fire, making the coals collapse against one another and give out more heat in preference to light. She loved how the amber glinted off his bones, spare with decades of fighting, making them softer; the bones he would have had had fate not stepped in.

“What is it, mei sa?” Luke turned to look at her over his shoulder. “You’re quiet tonight, quiet even for you”.
“Just thinking, ma sona. Thinking what life would have been”.
“Deep thoughts, Je-Je, but why think them? Life is as it is. We have nothing to gain by pondering on how it might have been different”.
“Now who sounds like a Healer, hey?” Jariel grinned. “I know thinking this line won’t get the horses watered, but it intrigues me. How much of life comes because of our actions and responses to situations, and how much was predestined for us. Would I be here to today, the person I am, if a Healer two centuries ago had not fore-spoken my birth and my actions? Or of if the Shantarican had not ordered the death of the Kainapas because of prophecy — would I still be Saiauri? Jariel Janir?”
“You would be who you are”.

Luk got to his feet and walked over to where their saddle packs were slung on a high branch against night-crawlers. He rummaged for a pack of trail bread and split it as he came back to the blankets. He tossed half over to her and flopped back to the ground. “There is no point in wondering what this alternate Jariel would be like because you are here. Those things did happen. The result is the lady who sits beside me, chewing her thumbnail, worrying about things even she lacks the Power to change. You are Saiauri. There is no changing that. You are Fomori and Kainapas. You are respected. You are feared. You are loved. You just are”.

“I worry you miss my point, Rikart Lukam. I am not saying I want to change the me I am now. I am just wondering if an alternate route would still have brought us to this point in time. Fireside conjecture, but I am too much a guide not to wonder about shortcuts and the paths not taken”.
“Mei sa, I am a mercenary, a fighting man. I deal with the enemy and the life I see before me. More than that I cannot manage. I leave the deep thinking and route finding to those better trained for it. But I will say this – I am here with this Saiauri, with this Jariel Janir. I know that it is the she who sits beside me, and she alone who could have brought me over to the Tribes. Factor that into your thinking, dear Guide of my life. If you look at an alternate you, you need to look at alternates of everyone else, and personally? I like the version we are today”.

On that, Luke turned back to the fire, carefully adjusting the pot so it sat in the best cooking coals. Jariel sat and watched him for a long time. Could the mercenary be right with his Northern pragmatism? She was trained to look for the complexities in every argument. Could it really be as simple as making the decision to be the person you saw in the mirror each day and to ignore the “what if’s”?

Sunday Roast: I like to pretend I’m a minimalist

So after last weeks blissful holiday, how did this week go? Um, not quite so blissfully if I’m being honest. You know every now and again you have one of those days. Now, imagine a whole week made up of those days, and you will have a pretty good idea of how pancake-flat I felt by the end of the week. But then we all had tea and cookies and a good gossip yesterday, so now I feel all 🙂 once more. Almost ready for next week. Almost…

Not just interested in jam and Jerusalem, the WI are calling for legalised brothels.

Bill Thompson’s latest column made me prick my ears up, not because of the warning about a viable Mac trojan (though that’s important too), but because of its call for better media literacy tuition in schools. This fits with a few other things I’ve been reading lately that are starting to tickle the back of my brain with interest.

A Japanese study has shown that children will bond with robot playmates. I guess it’s good to see proven something Asimov wrote about half a century ago, but at the same time it’s mildly concerning me. Why should these children have to bond with a robot? I’m also intrigued as to how the changes affect them over a longer period. Only in Japan I guess.

I’m not sure anyone with a full helping of common sense believes that automatic translators like Babel Fish are really reliable, but clearly diplomats don’t have a full helping of common sense.

Apparently, there are around four million UK bloggers. Guess I should be honoured that I was chosen as the joint-ninth then?

What’s your favourite flavor of death?

I’m not sure it’s exactly RSI friendly, but hot damn this steampunk laptop is gorgeous!

Want to know what to get me for Christmas? I wouldn’t say no to one of these Inka Pens (via David Seah‘s very persuasive review).

I just found out one of my pictures made it into Flickr Explore! So it made it on to page 20, but still 😛 I’m trying not to be miffed that it was a quick five second snap to show of my tattoo that made it into Explore as opposed to some of the other shots I worry hours over, but never mind. It’s a pretty tattoo and deserves to be shared.

Talking of pretty tattoos, I’m trying very hard not to be inspired by some of these designs…

Like postcards? Love MOO postcards (though why a UK based company automatically presents all it’s prices in dollars is confusing, and annoying, me).

I’m reaching the point where I’m scouring charity shops for good/trashy books to read. I always want to read more, never seem to make it to the library, and have to really love a book before I’ll shell out full price in Waterstones – so these 17 ways to get free books could come in very handy.

Only one trailer this week, but it is a good one – the full trailer for I Am Legend. Now, I’ve read and loved the book, so I’m eager/anxious about the movie. I’m really not sure how the book ending is going to translate to a Hollywood ending, so I’m preparing myself for a favourite to get butchered. But I will admit that the full length trailer is getting the tingles flowing.

And now, if you will excuse me, I am off to brave the weather to buy some groceries. And then do the washing up. Oh, I do have fun-filled weekends, don’t I? I just know that on Monday the EDLO is going to be full of tales of his action packed weekend, whilst I’m going to be “um, well, I had tea and cookies and slept a lot and watched lots of Bones… And went to Waitrose…” Yes, somewhere along the way I seem to have lost the party-animal Cas. I need to find her again.

A question of semantics

When I’m not at work, or out with friends, or indulging in a Bones marathon, I write. It’s what I do. How I de-stress. Sometimes I write for Bright Meadow, other times I write for me. And it’s got to the point in my own writing that I am having to describe what exactly it is that I’m writing to people. Real people. People I know, love and respect. People whose opinions I trust. I’m not talking about my blog-writing here – I’m pretty ok with talking about that now – but the writing I am doing on a much longer fiction piece.

Which is where I start to get trapped in semantics. I don’t feel comfortable calling it a ‘novel’ or even a book, because if nothing else, ‘book’ implies being published and we’ll probably be knee deep in flying pigs before that ever happens. And then there’s the fact that ‘novel’ implies a work with some serious message to impart. Or, at the very least, something set in the real world!

What I’m writing is neither of those things. It’s escapist fantasy pure and simple, set in a world of my own imagining, with characters that started life in my head because I was a lonely 17 year old who yearned to be the heroine. Sure they’ve fleshed out some since then, but still, we’re more in the realms of Robin Hobb than Zadie Smith here.

I’ve got the arc of what happens, though I’m worried I’ve over-reached because I really don’t have the skills to write the apocalyptic culminating battle I know in my head has to occur. I know the main characters like old friends and I am totally head-over-heals in love with one of the minor characters (already she’s gone from being a walk-on plot device part, to being a minor-but-pivotal character in her own right who is going to have to end up with at least a sequel all to her own). I know the world they all walk intimately, and have gone to the point that I’ve fleshed out whole patterns of trade and politics for socio-economically viable cultures, who are mentioned in just one passing line in the whole bloody thing. The only thing I’m still not sure on is the ending. On paper I know X fights Y. I know A betrays his people. I know he does this because B tells him to. But… things are still twisting in my head with that regard. There is a missing piece of the puzzle and till I’ve re-written what I plotted out last time I seriously put effort into it (a good couple of years back), I’m not sure where it’s all going to end up.

I got a little sidetracked there, sorry.

What I am try to impress on you all is that, regardless of what the finished product is, this story is in my head and forcing its way out of my fingers and onto the page. I can’t help it. Sometimes I lie awake at night and I can hear whole chunks of dialogue, just playing out. Scenes will scroll across my mind, making me lunge for a notebook so I don’t forget them. And that’s fine by me. I enjoy it. It would be lovely if I could do it all the time, but I can’t.

Which is where I start to stumble with language.

People ask me what I did at the weekend, for example, or what I did on my holiday. And I will, quite truthfully, tell them that I wrote.
“You write?” Slight taken aback pause, followed by (slightly) feigned interest. “What are you writing?”
“Um, this fantasy story set on an imaginary world with two warring cultures, and it’s all about one mercenary and how he brings about an apocalyptic war because he might want to change sides. But he doesn’t really. There’s this whole theme of love, and choice, and fate and…” That’s when I start to trail off because the blank look in most people’s eyes when you mention ‘fantasy’ really doesn’t encourage further elaboration. Fantasy is the realm of pimply fourteen year old losers who dress in black. It’s for the people who couldn’t get a date to prom. For the dorky among us. The geeks. Those not quite in touch with reality. The people who really could do with going back on their medication. And the people who write fantasy are the people who can’t write “properly”.

I’m not saying that that is who reads fantasy. My boss reads books about werewolves. Moose reads books about magicians and people with daemons. Lord of the Rings made being a fanboi/geek cool and pretty much socially acceptable. Nor am I someone who really subscribes to the belief that fantasy is a lesser genre (though it does seem that some god-awful dross gets published just because “it’s fantasy, so we don’t need standards”).

But still, say ‘fantasy’ and I challenge you not to think immediately of a dysfunctional teenager who wears a lot of spiky jewellery, listens to loud music, and who the FBI would question first if there was a suspected bombing at a high-school, because everyone knows that Johnny is just weird. I mean he reads books with pictures of swords, scantily leather-clad busty women, and dragons on the front. Right?

So I’m not writing a ‘book’ and I’m reluctant to mention the genre it really belongs in if I’m being honest. It would be lovely to think that I am writing a seminal work which later generations will analyse in depth and admire the skill with which I wove the many intricate themes throughout the story. To think that maybe scholars would marvel at how such an elegantly simple piece could still have relevance. And I get a perverse kind of glee thinking that it could end up being some school set-text. But that’s never going to happen. I’m not writing a modern classic, even if it was going to get published. I’m simply putting it all down on the page because I get a kick out of it and because there’s a hoard of little people fighting in my skull who really want to make sure their story gets heard.

I just wish I had some easy way to describe it to my mum is all. Or my brother, because I know the explanation I have right now is just going to have him mocking me over the sprouts at Christmas.