Volunteering

Since I left the UK, just to help me get settled over here in BC. I volunteered to help out once a week at the Canadian Red Cross. It’s quite common over here to do voluntary work, and in many circles it’s rather expected of you at some stage. Angie helps children who are having trouble learning to read, write and do sums, and I help fix aids for the disabled and similar. If asked why I do it I can say this; it lightens my soul. Better than any religion, better than any drug (Legal or not), volunteering with an open heart gives you a sense of, well I suppose you’d call it fulfilment, satisfaction. That and I work with a happy crew. A good mob, you might say.

Last week we were out on a ‘run’ delivering and fitting stuff, but I arrived early and found myself regaling the office with a few ‘war stories’ from when I worked in a UK hospital. Strange now that the memories of that time no longer bother me as they once did. The heartbreak and frustration of losing a patient, getting told off repeatedly for honestly answering patients questions, dealing with (Often violent) drunks in casualty, calming them with a soft word or two (Much to the surprise of the coppers who brought them in). Amusing anecdotes from operating theatre. Getting told repeatedly that I was ‘gay’ (Strangely enough I’m not, never was – didn’t know I had to be).

As I was telling my tales, I had a minor internal revelation. I began to realise that the memory of all the bad things that happened no longer hurt after all these years. The voluntary work I’ve been doing has given me a sound perspective to look back on why the hospital job was a bad career move, but a useful source of knowledge (and amusing anecdotes).

Voluntary work teaches you things about yourself; what you feel comfortable with, what you like and dislike. It’s a great confidence builder. Gives you a bit more character. What a pity that ‘elf & safety’ culture in the UK is killing some sectors. Although in the UK ‘government statistics’ will disagree with this view, and we all know how reliable those are.

Over here in Canada, at least where I live, voluntary work is part of the culture. You help out because you feel more confident that in your time of need someone will come to your assistance. It’s very comforting. I like it. Can I stay please?

Hunkering down

So my last post was August 5th? Wow. A lot has happened since then. I've driven coast to coast with Angie and the dog, sleeping in a slightly superannuated Minivan most of the trip, getting eaten alive by the local insect population, and generally testing my marriage to near destruction in the process.

The good news is that Angie and I have now found a place, hopefully sold our old house in England, put ourselves on the immigration merry go round which is more like a rotating door than anything else. One wrong move spits you back out onto the street. Never mind, the novel proceeds well if slowly, but I'm going to have to go back to my old IT career if anyone will have me, as we're trying to regulate the hemorrhaging of our available capital.

When the house is finally disposed of we can pay off the mortgage, which will leave us with a moderate sum to build a new home with; once we have sorted out all the immigration issues that is. For the moment we're hunkering down and conserving our resources. We have rented a small place on Vancouver Island near a village called Cedar, which is nice and with terrific views. Every mornings sunrise is a treat.

All we have to do is navigate the employment maze and perhaps we can stay a little longer.

Eight hours from home

England is five days in my past and I’m still acclimatising to the time difference. The received wisdom is that for every time zone you cross, it takes a day for your circadian rhythms to orientate to local time. That makes three more days before I’m properly in synch with British Columbian time.

The remnant of Jet lag is making me edgy and more irritable than normal. I’ve become susceptible to heat rashes and other irritants that rather take the edge off the trip for me. In addition we don’t seem to be doing any of the fun stuff that we promised ourselves; canoeing, fishing etcetera. Apart from the change of scenery and the improved weather, we might as well have stayed on the other side of the bloody Atlantic. I still feel hemmed in. The adventure just isn’t there.

Yet.

Why does this not surprise me

Picked up via a blogger called Tim Worstall; a frustrated author submitted copies of the first three chapters of Pride & Prejudice, Northanger Abbey and Jayne Eyre which I am informed are amongst the crown jewels of literature to 18 different publishers. Can’t stand Jane Austen and that genre myself; hated it at A-level, and still find it turgid and unwieldy even now, but chacun a son goût. The irony is that only one of the publishers recognised it.

This simply reinforces my long-held view that you have to be either an insider or extremely lucky to even get a book read by publishers. For an industry that should be crying out for new talent, this hardly seems the way to go about finding it. You don’t find Radium unless you do the hard work of processing a lot of pitchblende.

Mind you, this piece in the Telegraph made me smile. A book signing by Alastair Campbell disrupted? Tsk, tsk. Well done that man.

Namesake

On sick leave at the moment because I have contracted what is known as 'Policeman's foot'. Still, the paid leave is allowing me to focus on my literary ambitions.

Was cruising around on one of those aimless net searches you do when you can't do anything else and came across references to a chap who calls himself 'Guido Fawkes' a very well known political blogger. He's even appeared on NewsNight for crying out loud. I like his output; highly amusing and very educational. What I didn't care for much was finding out I have a namesake in the Welsh Assembly who is a bit too high and mighty.

Can I just point out that to anyone who bothers reading this that this person is absolutely nothing, repeat nothing to do with me.

Problems with News

I'm a bit of a fan of the Daily Telegraph Website. One of life's little pleasures is sitting down at the computer and being able to have a browse at all the good stuff they put on line. Unfortunately over the past couple of weeks it's been getting decidedly flaky.

This morning the site failed to load at all. The Timesonline works fine, as do the Grauniad and the Incontinentia, but my old favourite is very much hors de combat. What on earth is going on? Do they expect me to have to go out and buy a copy?

What boys might actually want to read

Reading the Telegraph this morning I came across this piece by Ruth Dudley Edwards, a crime writer. I’ll say this; I don’t read Ruth’s stuff, but with this piece she’s hit the nail right on its broad and proverbial head.

Emasculation of the media is a creeping process which those of us (Or is it just me?) on the ‘right’ of the literary spectrum have long been concerned about. A good story is a great read, and there are far too few about.

Me a fan of ‘Chick-lit’? Not really, and only if the insomnia is a real problem.

Rejection slip

Ye cats! I just got an e-mail from Macmillan. That was the fastest rejection I've ever received. Looks like MacMillan have been swamped by manuscripts and have pulled up the drawbridge like most other people in the publishing world. This leaves me in a bit of a quandrary; do I keep on pluging away at the publishing houses or do some self publishing via Lulu.com or some other free self publisher.

I'm pretty sure it's not the writing, it's more the marketplace. Best thing to do is to have a go and see what happens. If it flops, it flops. If it takes off - well, the mainstream publishers have just lost money and my custom for good.

Submission

There's always a nervousness around the house every time a piece of work gets submitted. Today was one of the bigger nervous episodes. I despatched a synopsis and sample package off to Macmillan, and hope that they are still looking for new authors. This is the fifth re-write of the story, and I like how it has turned out, so here goes nothing. "Shifting States" the new first volume in the Cerberus trilogy works. The story works, and I personally like it and have enjoyed writing it. The characters have more life than before. You can feel them much more.

It occurs to me that there's not a hell of a lot of good science fiction out there, in England at least. Well, not stuff that piques my particular interest anyway. By good science fiction I mean 'hard' science fiction, not space opera, fantasy or horror. About the only English science fiction writer I currently like is Peter F Hamilton.

Having written that, there's not much of a market for Sci-Fi, at least not if you look through the Writers Guides. There are quite a few publishers and agents who refuse to even look at the genre and many actively discourage it. Yet there's so much published that I find very uninteresting reading anyway. No accounting for taste I suppose.

Anyway, here's hoping.

The next leap forward

Our house goes on the market this week. We’ve been inviting valuations and listening to the ‘spin’ from those traditionally greatest at it – Estate Agents. We invited three of them in to talk to us and give us some ball park figures. Two quoted what I call ‘silly money’’ prices at us, and another was almost spot on our own estimate.

Subject to the aforementioned, Angie and I have elected to go with the first estate agent at a price we think is reasonable for the property and location. We could ask for more, but somehow that feels greedy and might possibly end up self defeating.

What with one thing and another, work on my MSS has ground to a complete standstill. I’ve been looking at the fragments and decided it needs a bit of a restructure. What I have is good solid stuff, but needs a move around rather than another rewrite. Use the old ‘flashback’ gag a bit more. The whole story feels like Icebergs drifting around the Arctic as winter sets in. Everything is there, but it just needs to cool a little more so that the story becomes a whole navigable mass.

A small act of contrition

What with being ill over the past few days, I have committed a heinous familial sin; I have missed my brother Paul’s birthday and needs must make amends. In addition Angie has just caught the nasty little virus I’ve just had, so while I’m having a few days off I shall be playing nurse while she sits in bed and catches up on her viewing of ‘Millennium’. I’m not so keen on it, but then again, I never really liked the X files or any of that genre all that much either. It’s okay, but I’m really just not that interested.

Notwithstanding; I have presented Paul with a small pewter pocket flask and an unusual Malt Whiskey to fill it with for his birthday along with an apologetic birthday card and hope he forgives me for my failing. Perhaps he can wet his lips with it when he goes playing his bagpipes and think well of his erring younger brother once in a while.

I haven’t written much this last week. It’s not that I’ve been lazy, it’s just that what with one thing or another, the mental cogs have not been meshing very well; ergo, my output has been waning. To be honest I think I just need a good rest.

Up a bit, down a bit

Almost collapsed on Wednesday whilst doing my day job. I had been suffering with a mild cough and ended up almost needing to be carried home. Well, considering I’m just short of 18 stone, they would have had a job, but I managed to get transported to my front door before collapsing onto the front room sofa for a couple of hours. Very light headed and woozy, very unstable on my feet. Went to the Doctors today, which I didn’t do me much good as he concluded I’ve got a viral infection which antibiotics or other medications won’t touch. Water, lots of, fresh air when I feel up to it, paracetomol for the fevers. Oh yes and rest.

On the writing front I’ve managed a few hundred words on the upstairs laptop, but nothing I take any real pride in. My head is all wrong ways round at the moment and I’m having difficulty thinking straight for more than fifteen minutes at a stretch.

Never mind; on the plus front an old mate who has asked to remain nameless says he has been passing copies of one of my old patented inventions around. On any number of occasions I must have bored the poor sod senseless with just how good it was for taking the edge off road and rail congestion. Poor sod. Never mind, it never did me any real good; but then I’m good at finding solutions, but not so wonderful at persuading the people who matter of their merits. More often than not; whenever I’ve put these ideas forward they’ve been dismissed as ‘crank’ stuff without a proper hearing from the money men.

The invention we were talking about was my part solution to congestion; quite an elegant bridging solution between roads, foot or rail. Well at least I thought so (But then I would, wouldn’t I?). The overhead Minitram system is a simple solution to a complex problem. I got the idea for the switching system one day in London whilst doing a job near Oxford Circus in November 2003. After that, everything just slotted into place. Routing systems, rail switching, the whole enchilada.
There have been similar solutions in the past, but none have ever been lightweight enough or flexible enough to provide the extra layer of public transport with the privacy and security that a car provides for example.
This one for example looks good, but how are the disabled to use it? You need to go up a flight of stairs to get to a boarding point for crying out loud. The same for all the other lightweight overhead monorail systems. They all end up being too heavy or too inflexible and complex.

You get round all the stability and switching complexity issues with a simple fixed lightweight primary & secondary rail system and cantilever arm like the one I came up with in 2004. Simple, proven technology that is both practical and cheap. Most of it comes in a ‘bolt together’ package that uses existing devices to deliver. Sensor packages which have been available since the 1990’s. Proven lightweight material technologies.

Is trundling along 4-5 metres above the street safe? Well let me think; the door interlock only opens if the sensors confirm it is on the ground in a stop, or a special override is used. If the power fails, the cab trundles to the next stop under battery power and shuts down there using the same kind of shutdown routine as a UPS does with a computer system. All the safety aspects have been thought through. About the only thing I was never sure of was the bending moment of the rail section.

All that and it’s scalable; you build it in loops, one to a street. You want a new interchange, you stick on a new secondary rail loop which can’t be accessed until the Wi-Fi guidance points go in. Want to add a street to the system? You stick in a new primary loop and download the upgrades to every autonomous cab unit. The day to day working of the system is, saving the passengers getting on and off, a mostly people free affair. Which is what you want from public transport. The cab software will even choose an alternate route if the loops between it and it’s destination is too congested, or even shut down because of an accident.

Oh bloody hell, I’m pontificating again. Must be the fever.

Water Torture

Whenever something is wrong in a house it has a distinct knock on effect. Stuff which shouldn’t matter becomes part of the daily abrasion that wears down even the strongest spirit. A constantly dripping tap is one such. Especially when dealing with one girl beginning to feel the loosening of parental bonds that come with her own new life. One wears you down, like water on rock, and weakens you for dealing with the other.

Making a difference in a century old terraced house like ours isn’t difficult; all it takes is money. Regrettably, money is one thing which is perpetually in short supply, despite two full-time incomes coming into the household.

This payday, Angie and I decided to make a small change in the kitchen. The fifteen year old pillar taps over the kitchen sink were running slower and slower and becoming ever more unsteady on their bases. This situation was getting to the point where getting enough water in the sink to do the washing up was taking half an hour. We can’t afford, nor do we have space for, a dishwasher; so we opted for replacing the taps over our old fashioned butlers sink.

These sort of tasks generally fall to me as we can’t afford the plumbers round here, and I am, amongst my many micro-skills, someone who can handle copper pipework; not to mention being quite capable of doing the odd bit of electrical wiring. The only things I really lack to do the job full time is the right piece of paper to say I can. Having started my working life as an Engineer and so learned the basics of wiring, machining and pipework as part of an old fashioned apprenticeship. Notwithstanding; you don’t need all that knowledge to fit a new set of taps, but it helps with knowing details like sealing off the joints with PTFE tape on the fitting threads to ensure there are no leaks – simple stuff like that.

The difference a simple thing like stopping a dripping wonky tap makes to a household is enormous. Almost like a shadow has lifted and the light shines again into a once darkened hovel. Angie is a little more relaxed, therefore so am I; which means I can get on with my writing in relative peace and quiet. “The life and death of a Bill Sticker” Manuscript has picked up, and I know where I’m going with it now. How to engage with the reader and maintain a thread of suspense throughout the narrative. The Cerberus Conspiracy trilogy goes in fits and starts, and I really need time out to bang my head out on the keyboard.

My trouble is that I need uninterrupted writing time to focus on the entire narrative thread. When I can see the story outline in its entirety, everything just flows. Rather like water from new taps really. Wonder what I need to replace in my head to make it all flow like that?

Birthday

My dear lovely wife Angela surprised me beyond measure yesterday by taking me first to a very nice lunch at the Golden Cross at Ardens Grafton, thence to a very pleasant health spa at a place that was once part of the timeshare boom.

Walton Hall is currently undergoing a £23 million makeover to Hotel and Health Spa. The Health Spa is only a Gym with a small pool and associated Sauna and Steam room facility at present, but once all the rough edges on the site are ironed out and a few more services offered should be very nice indeed. Our bedroom had not just a shower, but a ‘wet room’ facility, which I never used, as I took all my showers over at the Gym. We had a large flat screen wall mounted digital TV where I discovered that despite all the extra channel choices, all television broadcasting is still pretty lowbrow. The room was air conditioned and spacious and the bed a very comfy king sized affair. The room had patio style doors which opened out onto a small lawned area where we sat this morning, reading the Sunday Telegraph. Very civilised. All for £139 for the pair of us. Comfy chairs too.

We drank some mini bottles of champagne that we’d brought along with us, fooled around and generally misbehaved together. We ate well, did I mention that the food was good, although I wasn’t feeling adventurous enough to try some of the starters on the evenings menu and ended up with an omelette instead.

Although I didn’t do any writing, but read a lot instead, I feel I could get used to this. As Angie observed; my big wide schoolboy grin was back after too long an absence. Don’t know what I’d do without her.

Fifty

On the 12th of March this year (2007) I attain the age of fifty. This means I have lived for five decades. Fifty rotations of the Earth around the sun. Two hundred seasons. Fifty Springs, Summers, Autumns and Winters. Six hundred calendar months. Two thousand, six hundred weeks. More depressingly; two thousand, six hundred Monday mornings. Over Eighteen thousand rotations of the planet. Wow.

A lot has happened in that time; space travel, digital technology, the Internet. A lot of bad stuff has happened as well; Wars, Famines, plagues; but the good news is that humanity is still going strong. People still think it’s worth the effort and time to raise a family (Although for others, children are the unforeseen consequence of unprotected sex). Trees are still growing; the tide still comes in twice a day. The world is not dying; it’s thriving. Despite all the doomsayers and apocalypse addicts. Life adapts, it is a wonderful thing.

My downside is that writing success has so far eluded me, but I console myself it’s only a matter of time before the break happens and I make the transition from dilettante to professional. I’m still breathing and reasonably healthy; which is better than many of my contemporaries.

Of course I hate my day job; but doesn’t every writer? It’s just a means to an end even if my employers want me to treat it as the whole reason for my existence. Employers for me are simply a temporary resource; a meal ticket for which I have to pay the penance of hard graft and occasional physical discomfort. It’s also occasionally a source of humiliation, but again; it won’t be for much longer. I’ll either quit and go contracting for the last few months, or swallow my pride and carry on until July, when we pack up and try to make a new life overseas.

My raison d’etre sits in the next room and has intimated that she is going to treat me to ‘something very nice’ for my fiftieth birthday. Bless all of her tiny toes. I do so love that woman. Sometimes I wonder why she loves me, but she seems to.

Freemans and flooding

I love freebies! Today I got a phone call from Angie at about 15:30. She'd been offered free tickets for the RST in Stratford. The tickets were for Coriolanus, one of Shakespeare's Roman plays. Now I've never actually read or seen the play, mainly because it has always slipped below my very cluttered radar.

Yes, I would see it again. A roaring study in vainglory and pride, of stupidity and revenge. As always I love the language the plays are couched in, which made a welcome change from the current idiocies of the day job.

On the way home it started to rain, and seeing as the river level in Stratford is quite high at present, I was wondering whether we were due for another inundation. On the far side of the river, the Recreation ground and cricket field are still under water, and what with rain forcast for tonight will remain so as the ground is quite saturated. No matter, we live far enough from the river not to worry. When the waters start lapping on my front doorstep I shall know we're in trouble.

Back on track

Right. I'm more or less recovered now, the Doctors have given me a clean bill of health and I've pitched in to a new project, the 'Moose Calling' blog. After receiving my first cheque from those nice people at Google I'm all revved up and raring to go. The science fiction novel is finally beginning to take shape, as is my entry to the Daily Telegraphs writing competition. It might work, it might not, but I won't find out by just sitting on my hands.

Life is suddenly full of possibilities once more.