The October Plan (amongst other things)

For some reason today I have re-strung the words from annoying song ‘Bad Babysitter’:

I’m a real bad blogger
Get my ideas in the shower
(Whoop Whoop)
Forget them the next hour

I often think of blog posts when I am nowhere near a computer and am scampering from Place of Work A to Home B via C, awful commuter experience. Today’s ACE (the aforementioned awful commuter experience) involved a game of sardines. Twenty-three people and a buggy were crushed into the little space on a train by the doors. Not even in the aisle of the train (fifteen people were squished standing up along there), but between the doors. I know the exact number as when you are propped upright in a stranger’s armpit the only thing you can do is count heads as a distraction.

I often feel that wannabe authors should use their commute time to scribble down ideas. However, this depends if you can move more than your eye-lids on a day-to-day basis. National Express trains and the Victoria line are ruining my opportunity! The highpoint was when one disgruntled commuter who couldn’t fit on the train told us all ‘don’t you know I have places to go?’ which was greeted with a burst of sardonic laughter (appropriate for human sardines) throughout our squashed little corner. Like the rest of us were just there for the morning thrill!

The last thing I managed to scribble in my battered shorthand notepad was my October Plan. I often come up with a monthly plan, which could have anything on it from the nicely vague ‘write more’ to the greedy ‘buy flapjacks’. My October Plan is as follows:

• Write up article idea (Oh yes, I Haz One)
• Research magazines and papers for article idea (as article will need an article home)
• Research magazines that accept unsolicited short story submissions (as I Haz One of those as well)
• Open new bank account (most marvellously practical)
• Don’t let desk look like a chemist’s shop (Ah. Oops.)

My desk, at work, is turning into a mini outpost of Holland & Barrett. H&B, for those who don’t know, sell HEALTH in all its glowing forms – juices and potions and vitamins and oats. I am addicted to H&B. Somewhere in those aisles is surely a magic elixir that will make me:

A) Energetic and bouncy (like Tigger. Full of the joys of Spring. In Autumn.)
B) Keen to Get On (The Mantra being Every Day is a Day of Joy)
C) Not eat chocolate (It must sell something that looks/tastes/smells like chocolate but has zero calories)
D) Thin-calved (Oh come on – something must surely work?!)
E) Focused (as opposed to Very Easily Distracted).

The problem with VED (being Very Easily Distracted) is that... sorry... train was going past the window. What was that? Oh yes. Veg.

Veg?

This is how the day begins with a plan to get things done and ends coming home with a cauliflower.

Book reviews: Bernard Ashley, Stephen King, William Trevor

These are overdue reviews from books read way back in July. It seems July was a book-reading bonanza month for me!

Break in the Sun, by Bernard Ashley
The Running Man, by Stephen King writing as Richard Bachman
The Children of Dynmouth, by William Trevor
More of Milly-Molly-Mandy, by Joyce Lankester Brisley


Break in the Sun, by Bernard Ashley
Illustrations by Charles Keeping
First published by Oxford University Press, 1980
This edition published by Puffin Books, 1981

‘Break in the Sun’ was serialised by the BBC and shown in schools, at least I watched it in my junior school. Thirty years later, I buy the book. Is it because the story stayed with me throughout those years or because I saw the cover and felt nostalgic? In a way it is a curious combination of both.

The story is about Patsy, an eleven-year old girl who feels displaced living with her mum, step-father, and their new baby. Her step-father is cruel and lazy; her mother harried and exhausted, and they have recently left behind a nicer life in Margate to live in a small flat in London. Walking home from school, Patsy gets into conversation with the theatrical owners of a barge. They need a young girl for a touring stage play that is heading to Margate. Patsy sees a chance to escape and convinces them she is a budding actress. When she runs away her step-father is forced to look at himself and re-evaluate the real reasons for his cruelty.

This story is a kitchen-sink drama updated to the 1980s, reflecting those troubled times of unemployment, as well as new family dynamics and the universal issues associated with being eleven-years old. Patsy is gutsy and fearless, and you feel for her so much, struggling to find a sense of belonging.

The Running Man, by Stephen King writing as Richard Bachman
First published by New American Library Inc. 1982
This edition published by New English Library 1988

Stephen King’s Richard Bachman books usually concentrate on a dystopian futuristic society. (Or should that be Richard Bachman’s Stephen King books? The author himself would probably like that sentence!) ‘The Running Man’ continues in this vein, twisting elements of George Orwell’s ‘1984’ alongside a scary vision of gruesome reality television shows aimed to subdue the masses. These shows in the book play on people’s desperation, greed, and fascination with horrific spectacle - akin to those who picnicked around the gallows on the day of a hanging. Sadly the reality shows on our television screens now don’t seem a million miles away. Maybe this book should be read in schools alongside George Orwell.

It is the law that every apartment has a ‘Free-Vee’ – a television bolted to the wall – and every day it shows big money game shows such as Treadmill to Bucks, a show that only accepts chronically ill patients in the hope that they will die on air before the payout. But the real prize money can be found on ‘The Running Man’ contest – where contestants run and are hunted down, by both officials and members of the public. Forget the image of the muscle-bound Arnold Schwarzenegger in the film version of this book, the real ‘running man’ is lanky, lean and clever enough to realise the truth behind the shows.

The Children of Dynmouth, by William Trevor
Cover designed by Zandra Rhodes, part of Penguin Decades celebrating seventy-five years of Penguin Books.
First published by The Bodley Head, 1976
This edition published by Penguin Books, 2010

This book follows awkward teenage loner Timothy Gedge on his wanderings around the seaside town of Dynmouth. Timothy enjoys spying on his neighbours, who only realise the true purpose of his interest when it is too late.

The story is delightfully unsettling. You feel deeply sorry for Timothy’s lack of social understanding and yet at the same time appalled and repulsed by his selfishness, his single-minded view of life. He is so desperately alone and that is the crux of the matter – as without this you would hate him, and yet with it he is curiously vulnerable. The neighbours, several of whom he blackmails, each emerge from their encounter with him saddened by the mirror Timothy holds up to reflect their lives. Tension builds throughout the book but the quiet finale is not what you’d expect, leaving the disturbing notion of having glimpsed the under-belly of real life, where a million Timothy Gedges await, as opposed to a dramatic film.

This novel won the Whitbread Award in 1976, and reading it you can see why – brilliant characterisation and description every step of the way.

More of Milly-Molly-Mandy, told and drawn by Joyce Lankester Brisley
First published by the Christian Science Monitor, 1929
This edition published by George G Harrap & Co, 22nd impression, No 2.
It’s a hardback with dust jacket, but I cannot find a date. I suspect 1962 or earlier.

Milly-Molly-Mandy books have a special place in my heart. I have written before about the author, but this collection follows again in the small-village adventures of a small girl and her friends. What is lovely is that the adventures are the sort that means so much to a five-year old – getting stuck climbing a tree, going for a picnic, going to the seaside. Joyce never talks down to her small audience, either, but seemingly captures their delight for the small pleasures in life and her stories feel like such an antidote to our materialistic society.


Scanner broke, so am missing two pictures! Will add them if I can fix scanner. *ponders scanners innards*
Update - November. Fixed printer!

What to do when waiting to hear from a short story competition

1. Check primary email. Every five minutes
2. Check second email as well in case you gave out the wrong one
3. Check old hotmail email you had when a student in case you had a memory black out on the competition form
4. Check phone. Every ten minutes
5. Check voice mail just in case phone has mysteriously malfunctioned
6. Curse the skies
7. Compulsively eat sweet things
8. Stare into space looking tragic
9. Lurk around WH Smith’s surreptitiously researching magazines that publish short stories as Plan B
10. Write the next idea

While I am currently zinging through all stages 1 – 10, I seem to be lingering most on looking tragic. This could also be because I have caught the cold of doom that seems to be wafting around the office, and feel like I need to lie down on a bed of tissues.

So to cheer me up, what creative things are you doing? Working on the main novel – if so, what stage? Stuck on an edit? Researching the 18th century? Compulsively eating Dolly Mixtures (hey, that could be just me).

And for gorgeous inspiring autumn-ness, check out these pictures:

Picture credit: Denis Collette - gorgeous photography on Flickr.

Okay, who ate my scarf?

Do you ever have a day when you cannot even control your own clothes, let alone be expected to manage Life with all its whimsy? I am having such a day. It started when I woke from being semi-smothered by my pillow. You know the day bodes badly when your own bedding is conspiring to kill you.

My cardigan on the tube turned into a giant flopping beast, determined to make friends with my tube-dwelling neighbours. Somewhere under Islington my ear-phone wire (what is that called? I somehow suspect not 'ear-phone wire') did something funky with the buttons and the whole shaboodle tied me in a knot while I was trying to get off at Kings Cross. Getting off the tube in the rush hour requires nerves of steel at the best of times; let alone when I have somehow constructed a reef knot from my clothes.

My gloves fell out of my bag as I dug deep for my travel-card; my socks keep bunching down into my trainers, and my top has decided to saucily wink a small crescent of tummy just when I least expect it. Look, clothes, I have work to do today, and I cannot keep checking if you are in the same place as you were this morning. Don’t do this to me! I am supposed to be looking corporate and business-like, despite the fact a conker* dropped out of my bag as I walked in the office. Whoops.

Sometimes I wish I was a monk. They seem to be so sorted in the fashion sense of things. Just a big brown sack – what can go wrong? Although you know I’d have problems roping it in the middle. It is my dream in life to own a slanket.** Seen them yet? A giant blanket with a head hole and sleeves. If I Were an Author (sung to the tune of ‘If I Were a Rich Man’ from Fiddler on the Roof), then magazines would picture me in my gorgeous home, notebook in hand, draped in my slanket. I would be at the forefront of slovenly female author fashion. Until those heady days, however, I am stuck with the evil cardigan and the top of doom.

*A conker is a horse-chestnut. They fall from the sky! Well, trees. Children of Old (sorry, mum) used to drill a hole through them, string them up, and bash them together to see who had the strongest conker. Cheats used to bake them in the oven first so they were like little round bricks.

**This is a slanket. My continuing laughter doesn't halt my desire, strangely.