Blog guru

One of the things that inspired me to start this blog was reading the website of one Glyn Watkins. How Glyn and I stumbled across each other is a long story and doesn’t need repeating here, but the upshot is that I kept checking out his website from time to time, and gradually found myself addicted to his blog (“might as well face it, you’re addicted to blog”, as the song goes. Sort of.)

Glyn faces the same kind of problems as me, only worse. He’s a poet, and it’s even harder to get poetry published than children’s fiction. So I have followed the ups and downs of his career over the last year or so with interest. Check out his site and have a read of his blog. It’s a marvellous mix of philosophy, humour, wildlife observations, and stream-of-consciousness rambling (some of the best posts are written when he is the worse for beer). Oh, and buy his books. All of them. Or you’ll have me to answer to.

You too might find yourself sucked in to a world of meat pie floaters and Hayseed Dixie…

One Angry Man

I’m still on ‘jury duty’. Supposedly. In practice, I still haven’t had a sniff of a case, and just keep turning up only to be sent home again. All the bad ‘uns keep pleading guilty, probably because they’d rather be out in the sunshine than stuck in court. At least it means I’m getting paid to sit in an air-conditioned room and read my book, which beats working, but it’s still a bit frustrating.

And it’s bad timing, coming straight after 2 weeks holiday. Work is piling up, both ‘at work’ and at home. I really need to get the text for the first Gorgeously Gross Guide finished by the end of this week, but things keep getting in the way. It will happen, though – not much left to do. I’ll be glad to have a full first draft finished; I’m already losing the momentum I had built up on ‘Personal Demons’ in France, and I desperately want to get on with it. My mate Jack is working on the musical version and plans to have it done by September, when the schools go back. I’d like to beat him with the book version, so at least my text can guide what he is writing.

The heat doesn’t help, either – don’t feel like doing much. Bah! Grumble, moan…

Ear candy

Just a quick plug for a band who deserve to be about a squillion times better known than they are – Descendants of Cain.

Though not currently performing as a live act, they have just released two new albums electronically, available for download from TuneTribe. I downloaded ‘Assiah’ and took it with me to France. And loved it.

If you share my admittedly unfashionable tastes in music, do check them out. And give them money. And tell your friends. Good things in this world should be nurtured

A mere truffle

Back from 2 weeks in France, in beautiful Perigord, land of chestnuts, truffles and nervous geese. The weather was hot (but it was hot here, too, I know), food was fantastic, scenery even better. As someone who used to be involved with woodlands, and who has done a bit of reading into the history of our landscape, it was fascinating to be somewhere where there is just so much woodland, most of it unmanaged in recent times, and so few people. It can’t, in any way, be described as natural wilderness (there’s hardly any of that left in Europe) but it does at least give a feel of what lowland England might have been like once, before it was so thoroughly tamed and sanitised by humans.

The sheer scale of habitat is reflected in the wildlife it supports – you see it most in the insects. There are butterflies everywhere, marbled whites, huge orange fritillaries, even swallowtails. And all kinds of bees, bugs and beetles, including stag beetles that drone through the air like small helicopters. It’s wonderful but sad at the same time, because it hints at what we have lost here in England.

Still, I muddled through, helped by the swimming pool, sauna, and plenty of chilled white Bergerac. One has to soldier on.

I managed to get some work done on ‘Personal Demons’, though not as much as I would have liked (largely due to the aforementioned sauna, pool, etc). Even so, I got back into the flow of the plot, which is something I haven’t achieved for a long time, and made good progress. I just hope I can keep it up now I’m back. Unfortunately, I came straight back from holiday to jury service, which seems to involve sitting around in a waiting room then being sent home. It’s been nearly a week now and I haven’t had so much as a sniff of a trial.

I also need to finish off the text for the first of the Gorgeously Gross Guides (see below). The whole thing is coming together nicely now, and the text at least just needs a few tweaks from me. The Americans, apparently, are very keen and have been very complimentary about the project. I allow myself a little glow of smugness, though most of the success will be down to the illustrations and pop-ups.

I’ll post images from the project as soon as I get permission.