Able for a Fable?

Picked up a copy of Aesop's Fables in Eason's recently and have been dipping in and out of them every so often remarking at their profundity one minute and at their inanity the next. And while I'm not actively looking to them as a moral compass or a guiding light, having already been innately schooled in their messages, I am still all the better for having them in my collection. Ye could do worse. Here be a swift one:

Two Bags: According to ancient folklore every man is born into the world with two bags suspended from his neck - one in the front and one behind, and both are full of faults. But the one in front is full of his neighbour's faults; the one behind full of his own. Consequently, men are blind to their own faults but never lose sight of their neighbour's.

Cue whoops, cheers, pipes and smoke!

More tomorrow ...

PS - Just added an FB 'Like' and 'Share' button there on the right. Please use liberally!

Tall tales!

Gulls 'Skulled'!

Yeah, last week we noted that bats get the bends, seals love wind farms, elephants have a better sense of smell than dogs, who get jealous of other dogs, even stuffed ones, This week we read that black cats are under threat because they are not photogenic enough for the Facebook ambitions of their owners when compared to marmalades and albinos and that red squirrels are fighting back and winning the survival battle against their grey impostors while tortoises are helping alligators to escape from zoos and cows are forming delinquent gangs raining death and destruction on all who come near them as pigeons have begun taking the Tube to different districts of London in order to sample the wide variety of discarded cuisine that the city has to offer.

All true. (I can send you the proof!)

But the biggest story of the week is the latest news that seagulls have turned on us! Last week we thought it was a joke when some politician suggested that something be done about their deviant behaviour here, but similar experiences have been reported in the UK as well. Despite having little in the way of previous, it seems that the same gulls have, all of a sudden, started picking fights with their human neighbours - pecking our heads, robbing our ice cream, gouging at our eyes, crapping on us from on high and generally acting the proverbial and avian b*llox when around us. And the reason why? And this is the real story - apparently it's because they are all, well, locked i.e. scuttered, plastered, Brahms und Liszt!  Word has it that all this good weather of late has packed our coasts out with a variety of flying ant which seagulls just love and which, once they chomp enough of them, fills their systems with formic acid - a thing that has the same effect on them as, say, eight or nine pints has on us!  It's as though the summer has turned into one massive free bar for them and the ensuing business has become predictably messy. Ma-gull-uf! Anyway, just warning y'all to be on alert and maybe to wear some protective head gear when nearing the coast and not to be too surprised if a lesser black backed gull looking unsteady on his feet arrives into your local demanding to be served and insisting that up to then he's only had the two!

PS - Just added an FB 'Like' and 'Share' button there on the right. Please use liberally!

More tomorrow ...

Excuse me, I'm a lesher bwack black seeee ... Oi! ... YOU! ... looking for a slap pal!!

Home in Two Minutes!

Decided to pull, or maybe that should be push, a fast one today! By that I mean, I decided to trace my route home from the old gym the other night with the aid of Google Glass. The experience was dizzying! It's a weird and wacky offering I have to say. You speak the commands and it does as you ask. I was especially taken with the feature that allows you to take a photograph by simply blinking your eye! Have a look if you've two minutes to spare.

More tomorrow ...

Glass and a half!

What's it all about, Alfie!?

Time and space are of the essence in the blogosphere, that's for sure. If the point you're making is not easily accessible in both these terms - then you might as well just stick it on the inside shelf of Davy Jones' Locker and go for a pint. Case in point. A couple of readers got on to me recently to ask me what the title of this blog meant - something I explained when I started to write it 52 days ago but which I now understand is the equivalent of 6,306 light-years ago in blog time! But since they've asked, I suppose that allows me to tell y'all agayun. The Dualist refers to the working title of a book I finished earlier this summer and this blog is designed, in a round about way, to promote the fact while I try to drum up some interest in it from agents and the like. Whether it ever sees a cover, a shelf, or the light of day is up in the air it's true but that's another day's yap. For now suffice it to say that The Dualist is the working title of the book, a crime thriller. The Dualism or Dualist in the title refers to its main characters (there are two of them!) who at times feel as if they are different people (when pitted against each other as fate has it!) and I felt that this was a better title than the original one, The Seventh Victim, which I liked but which I felt lacked some fundamental ingredient (about the dualism!) and therefore wasn't succinct enough to claim the title!

And what's it all about? Well, briefly it's about a Dublin taxi-driver who poses as the author of a cutting-edge crime thriller which becomes a bestseller and makes him world famous but in doing so also brings about his downfall - as soon as his nemesis reads it. Dan-dan-dan! So there ye have it. But if that's not enough then be sure to tune into this blog next week as I will be posting the first five chapters in order to give you a flavour of what it's about and, in the process, instill a strong urge in you to march the streets demanding its immediate publication and a place for its author on the Booker shortlist! So now.

More tomorrow...

The Opus und Ich!

A Comical Trip Back in Time

Anno domini 1977. Neither today nor yesterday, true, but a lot of memorable things occurred that year and here are just a few: The Sex Pistols released Never Mind the Bollocks, The Clash released The Clash, Fleetwood Mac released Rumours. Star Wars came out, so did Saturday Night Fever, so did the Commodore PET, the 'first personal all-in-one computer'. Roots was on the telly. Red Rum won a record third Grand National. United won the Cup, Liverpool won the league, Virginia Wade won Wimbledon. Dublin won the All-Ireland. Elvis, Groucho and Marc Bolan all passed on that year. So too did Steve Biko. But not for nothing. All that and more in the space of one short year in time.

It was a lot for a ten year-old to take in. But, being ten, I most likely didn't take too much notice of too many of these seismic happenings back then. Probably because I was too busy waiting for my old man, God rest him, to come home of a Friday with my favourite comic, Tiger and Scorcher, under his arm - an issue of which he never once forgot - and an air of anticipation that its arrival never once failed to arouse. Hardly a surprise when I had the pressing exploits of Billy Dane, Nipper Lawrence, Skid Solo, Hamish Balfour and Johnny Cougar to attend to. A few years back when we were clearing out the old house, clearing all the memories away, so to speak, I found a long forgotten bag that had been lying in the corner of the old attic since God knows when. I was nearly going to throw it in the skip along with all the other junk but instead I stuck my head inside and got the most pleasant of all surprises. So stay with me a bit while I fire up the ole TARDIS and go backwards in time to 1977- a comic reminder to your own good self as much as to me that it was nearly all good back then!

Memory lane!

50 Shades of Shay!

A couple of days ago my friend David, a writer and designer, posted a mood board for his up and coming novel, working title Peripheral Vision. Up to then I'd never heard of such a thing but a little bit of a google told me that a mood board is used (by graphic designers et al) "to enable a person to visually illustrate the style they are pursuing or to visually explain a certain style of writing or an imaginary setting for a story line." In the context of Dave's new work the mood board really helped me to get a clearer picture of what he has in mind and as a result I now look forward to reading his finished opus - which, doubtless, will be as compelling as his blog. The experience has also converted me to mood-boardism in general! So it's all good. Handily enough too, today is a defining day in this corner of the blogosphere because you are now reading my 50th ever post, a landmark that I didn't think I'd reach when I started out but there ye go. I've got here! More and more people are showing up to the site too which is great so I'll keep on going for another while yet. Meantime, I once again doff my hat and say cheers again to everyone for sticking with me to date and to honour this magnificent occasion, this golden anniversary, I have put together a little mood board of my own!

More tomorrow ...

50 is golden!

Know Your Crime Fiction? Take the Test!

Quizzes by Quibblo.com

Riddle Dee Diddle!

Ah, the old ones are the best ones ... so off we go! - Three travelling salesmen rent a hotel room for the night and pay €30 at reception for it. They go up to the room and after a couple of minutes the porter brings up their bags and hands them back €5 because the receptionist just remembered that the hotel was giving a discount on the room that night. So the three salesmen decide to each keep €1 of the €5 and to give the porter a €2 tip. A little later they decide to tally up their expenses for the weekend and come across a strange anomaly: Each one of them had originally paid €10 (towards the initial €30), then each one got back €1 which meant that they'd paid €9 apiece for the room. Then they gave the porter a €2 tip. That is, 3 by €9 which equals €27 plus the €2 tip which makes €29. So where on earth did the other buck go!? Gaaaaaaddddd!

My brain earlier, trying to figure this riddle!

Ten things we didn't know last week ...

Here are ten things that researchers have discovered this week: 

• Lack of sleep can create 'false' memories of events that have never taken place.
• Grunting genuinely gives tennis players an advantage by helping them return the ball faster.
• Pyramid tea bags are proven to 'have better brewing efficiency' i.e. to make a better cuppa tea than round ones.
• Children as young as three recognise 'cute' features in babies, kittens and puppies.
• Eating probiotic yogurt may improve blood pressure.
• People with vitamin D deficiency are twice as likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia than those with sufficient levels of it.
• Bats get the bends when they fly too near to the blades of wind turbines.
• Seals, on the other hand, are using offshore wind farms to their advantage because these 'artificial reefs' attract more fish and crustaceans. 
• Elephants have the most effective sense of smell of all mammals
• Dogs feel jealous towards other dogs, even stuffed ones.

So now so, stick all that in yer pipes and smoke them.

Hmmm ... fascinating!

Just Do It!

Went to see a movie the other night called Nowhere is Home featuring the band Dexys (formerly Dexys Midnight Runners). Plot-wise, the film focuses on a gig given by the band in London last year and peppers it with some general comments, made in an interview afterwards, by frontman, Kevin Rowland, and trombone player, Jimmy Patterson. Much of the talk was about the 26 year hiatus between the last album and the current one and about how the original band split without really fulfilling its potential. Great stuff if you're a Dexys fan (which I am) or want to become one, probably not much in it for you if you're not. Still, everything has its universal moments and this was no different. At one point Rowland tells a brief story about being in a club in London a few years after the original DMR thing had finished and a guy, worse for wear, came up to him and said something like: "You're that guy from Dexys Midnight Runners aren't you?" To which Rowland nodded and said "yeah". Then the guy looked him in the face and said to him: "Why didn't ye just ... ye know ... why didn't ye just do it?" Rowland looked at him, wondered about it a bit but couldn't answer. He says it was one of the best questions he's ever been asked. Thinking about it, it might well be one of the best ones we could ask ourselves too.

Currently on release

Wise and Shine!

Read this in the FT Weekend Magazine the other day. "When people are asked what they'd like in life they typically respond that they want to be happy... But in practice, happiness is flimsy, relatively unpredictable and best thought of as something that may visit us if we create the right environment for it. A practical, everyday sort of wisdom - the ability to make good choices and judgments in life - is the stuff we need to negotiate its sharp bends." Hard to argue with that but then again the only true wisdom I suppose is in knowing well that you know ... well ... sweet football! Have a wise day!

Happy are the wise, those men of wisdom!

PS. -  The solution to last week's Kinda Crime Crossword is below. And the lucky winner of the pint is, I have to confess, my good friend and fierce adversary at squash, Podge Gargle. 

More tomorrow ...

The Road Not Taken

I was paying for some groceries in the local shop on Saturday when a man at the checkout next to me,  a non-fluent English speaker I quickly gathered, said to the cashier:

                'Bykart, bykart!' 

                He said it over and over, 'Bykart, bykaart!', but she just couldn't figure out what it was he was saying or what it was he wanted.

                I, however,  having seen The Two Ronnies' famous Four Candles sketch at least ten times, had no such problem!

                'Bykart?' I said to him and shook imaginary handlebars in front on him.

                'Bykart,' he replied nodding excitedly as though he'd just found a long lost relative.

                'No sell bykart here," I said.

                He feigned dejection by shaking his head for a few seconds until I said:

                "No bykart here ... but come with me.'

                Whereupon he smiled and bowed.

                I eyed the bewildered staff sympathetically before revealing the Third Secret of Fatima to them.

                "Bike card, he said," I said. "That would be a Dublin Bike card he'd be wanting."

               Then I tapped my new friend on the shoulder and we left the shop together, brothers-in-arms, as they stuttered and stammered and tried to insist that no such thing existed.

               There are two  Dublin Bike stations outside that shop on Grand Canal Quay, the nearer is a few yards away to the right near Pearse Street, the other further off to the left on Hanover Quay. So we went to the near one and discovered that you can indeed use a prepaid card (a bykart!) to hire a Dublin Bike but that it must be applied for well in advance. (I have one) You can also use your bank card too, (might that be a bankart!?), to hire one in an instant. However, only designated stations have the facility to allow card payments and, of course,  the one we were at was not a designated station.

                So all my on-the-hoof research and good intentions came to nothing. Despite them, the man left doleful and bikeless and our fleeting friendship, which began with so much promise, faded away to nothing.

               I walked on home alone. I passed the second station on the way, the one not chosen, right by my house, and saw immediately, written in lights, that it was a designated station, that you could use a card to hire a bike from right here. Right now! 
               Oh so near and yet ...

               A surge of energy had me scanning the area,  trying to relocate my lost friend among the green benches and the red poles and the burgeoning crowds that were gathering at the new theatre. But by then he had vanished into thin air. Gone forever, and with him my best intentions, crushed to pulp like grapes underfoot!  

                At least next time I'll have the knowledge to be a better citizen and tourism ambassador.

Dublin Bikes are great!

Reverting to Type!

No idea why I was drawn to an article about typewriters in the Financial Times yesterday but there ye go. It was about the German government threatening to use them for Top Secret purposes in order to prevent online hacking by American spies - a regressive but ingenious solution that will, doubtless, confound the techies but delight the makers of Tipp-Ex. Anyway, as the article (written by author Andrew Martin) progressed it became less about spying and typing and more about how artificial things, 'digital' things, are increasingly being served up to plebs like you and I while 'real' things are becoming the exclusive reserve of the super-rich. If we want to see George Clooney on a given day, we look him up on YouTube, if the super-rich want to see him, they invite him round! That type of thing. It's an interesting observation that probably has a grain or two of truth in it. But, loot aside, what in essence delineates us from the super-rich, asks Martin?" Well, we do 'modern' while they do 'classic'. There's a big difference between the two and to illustrate the point he quotes one cigar-smoking member of the latter species who recently observed that ... 'Bentley's have been hideous for years'. Classic, indeed!

Modern or classic? Let your status decide.

Never say never ... or do you?

A thought. A lot of the time I wonder about determination and the nature of it. How long can you remain determined without seeing any results? How many times do you come back for more before you realise there is no point. I suppose proper determination involves a mix of never saying die but also of knowing when you're beat. Many would disagree with this 'definition' - I even disagree with it myself sometimes! Perhaps the simplest answer is to never give up ... unless it's killing you for no good reason. And if it is doing that ... go to the next project. The braver and bolder one. The one that was meant to change you and change the world ... Happy Saturday!

A scan of a section of my brain under stress! :)

Wilde at Heart!

An edition of The Importance of Being Earnest was sold at auction late last month for the princely sum of £55,000 - i.e. -  nearly seventy European big ones to you and to me!  Ample loot for sure ... but I reckon it was paid by someone who, rightly, figured it was worth acknowledging the generosity of its author, Oscar Wilde, who had it in his mind to say thank you to someone for simply being kind. The person in question was  Major James Nelson, the Governor of Reading Gaol when Wilde was incarcerated there and the reason Wilde sent him the gift was because Major Nelson had allowed Wilde access to books while he'd served out his sentence.

The edition was inscribed with these words: "To Major Nelson from the author. A trivial recognition of a great and noble kindness." 

Were I Major Nelson and had I received such a gift, I think I would have written back to Wilde and rather than offer something in return or say anything new, I would have simply repeated those same words back to him, given that little if any kindness at all was shown to him when he needed it most. I often wonder had he lived longer, how much more Wilde would have gifted to literature and to the world. Lots, I'd wager. He died, a devastated man, aged only 46.

The Earnesty of Oscar!

Complete the Crime Crossword and you could WIN a FREE Pint!

Fancied trying something a bit different today ... so I put together a little 'Crime' crossword for y'all! These damn things are harder than ye think - hence one or twelve 'non crime' clues. Not being technically gifted either - I'm afraid you'll have to print this one out and fill it in by hand - just as though you were down the station! But apart from all that, it's great ole sport altogether!

Annnd!!! ...  to make it interesting, the first person to complete the puzzle will WIN A PINT OF TUBORG in the Beggar's Bush on Haddington Road courtesy of yours truly and which can be claimed any time between now and Christmas, the only provisio being that ye have to drink it with me (who'll be timing you!). Runners-up will have the choice of buying me a pint at the same venue over the same period of time - without the stopwatch! So c'mon now, get googling those answers and reply to me as soon as you're done with a JPEG pic of your solution!

Win a pint of to grub (anag) (6)!

PS. I'll post the answers in a couple of days

More tomorrow...

French Paradox!

I was waiting at a bus stop on Drumcondra Road last Sunday, finishing an early chapter of a Parker novel, when a man walked up to me and announced that he was French.

"Fair play to ye," I said.

"Sank you," he replied.

Then he apologised to me for speaking too much English. Which meant he didn't speak very much at all.

So I accepted his apology and sanked him back.

Then he pointed to a sign outside a B&B next to the stop which had No Vacancies written on it and shrugged his shoulders like a Frenchman. Only then did I notice his luggage. A narrative formed pretty quickly in my mind loosely based on the words ... bagages ... Irlande ... beret and croissant.

"It is yes, no? Or no, yes?" he asked.

I thought about it for forty five seconds and replied.

"Yes it's no. Yes. Non vacances, oui. Oui. Non." 

His look became odd.

An empty Hunkydorys crisp bag passed in silence and without incident through the gap between our faces.

Then he leaned down to grip the handle of his bagages and sanked me encore.

I stuck my left arm (and Parker) out into the road and sanked him encore squared and with knobs on - but not nearly with as many knobs or squares as I used to sank the driver of the bus whose front doors were opening for me just then.

(Moral of story: improve both conversational French ... and/or English)

French perajox!

Makin' Headlines

There was a lot of banter on the bloggy tweetosphere there last week about the Garth Brooks Fiasco and the various newspaper headlines about same, the consensus being that the Metro Herald's 'Party Off, Garth!', front-pager was the tops. The whole thing put me in mind of killer headlines in general but the ones that made me chuckle or cringe in particular. So I've gathered up a few for your delectation and all ye have to do is clickety click on Stevie McC below, the full screen option to enlarge, and have yerself an aul giraffe if you've naught else to do. And while you're at it why not sign up to this here blog by putting your email address in the box on the right and receive daily updates ... go on ye know it makes sense!

More tomorrow...

                                                                   Music by Ukeristic Congress!

Headline acts!

Well Oiled!

The brakes on my aul bike were a bit rusty from the rain this morning so without hesitation I reached for my tried and trusted unassuming ole chum - the can of WD-40. One spray of the nozzle and the job was Oxo. Just now, I opened the paper and saw I was in good company. I must admit, I like the cut of that Wizard's jib! Great minds, us fools!

More tomorrow ...

WD-40 - apply to life!

Tinseltown's 'Land' Grab!

Here's a thing I never knew and which makes no difference either way but the famous Hollywood sign that we all recognise on the hills above Hollywood in California originally read "Hollywoodland" up until 1949 when the sign was renovated and it was decided that the last four letters should be dropped. And here's proof. Which begs the question where would we be if the big wigs at Funderland or Legoland or Burgerland of indeed Ireland or Iceland were to do the same thing. God knows where is where!

Sign o' those times.

If You Start Me Up I'll Never Stop ...!

I suppose if you mention The Beatles at some stage you have to mention The Rolling Stones and as I wrote a piece last Saturday marking the anniversary of Paul's first encounter with John, this week I'll mark the occasion of the Rolling Stones first ever gig which took place 52 years ago on this day in 1962 at The Marquee Club in London which was then located at 165 Oxford Street. While the Marquee show was the first Stones gig, it was not the first time that Mick and Keith played together as they had their own band, Little Boy Blue and The Blue Boys, which was active on the Dartford scene a year before they upped stakes and moved to London and legend. Estimates put the number of concerts played by The Stones since that first appearance at over 2000! So now ye know!

Still gathering no moss!

Your opinion matters ... pass it on!

After yesterday's post bemoaning the fact that the land line's number is virtually up, it was refreshing to read that the rise of the digital age has actually made word-of-mouth recommendations more important than ever. The reason: because of the ensuing information overload that social media and its ilk have heaped upon us, people are more likely to to take their friends' advice over that contained on best seller lists for games, music, apps, movies and books. Our opinions do matter after all so pass them on! Yaaay! The study was conducted by Oxford University.

                                                                      Illustration by Debaser

I think I'll haaave ... vanilla!

The Landline's Final Call

I read a piece earlier this week about the ole landline becoming obsolete, another victim of digital media's relentless forward drive. I think the writer said he'd give it five years tops before the bell tolls for last call. Maybe less. Whenever it is I'll miss it when its gone because, apart from making me feel ancient, my memories of the ole blower are fond and I can think of worse yardsticks than it to measure my progress from boy to man. The first phone we got at home, a big beige coloured rotary dialler of a thing, would've arrived some time in the late seventies and I can remember even now those early incoming calls and the ominous air they would cast over the house as my father confronted the receiver as though it were some kind of poisonous snake before picking it up and suspiciously announcing our number, 429314, to whoever it was on the end of the line. And then would come the joy and relief when he'd discover that it wasn't MI5 but just another aunt or uncle or brother or mother on for no other reason than to say hello and congratulate us on having got the phone.

As I got older, my personal interest in that phone became more vested - mates would ring to furtively arrange clandestine underage pints and soon there were the voices of girlfriends on wanting to know whether I realised how saying what I'd said had made them feel how they felt! There were many long silences and slam dunks back in those days. As a student I often found myself on the other end of the line, nervously pressing 'Button A' on a beetle black pay-phone in the hallway of some forbidden flat or other before telling my mother that I wouldn't be home to face the music until the next day! Then the college days passed and the stakes were raised when my telephone manner became the difference between getting paid or getting fired.
But I think my rites of passage were complete when I got a place of my own which came with a touch tone phone of its own which in turn bequeathed me a number of my own denoting the fact I was now a man!

Then in 1998 the wires went and I went 088 with them and soon afterwards it was all digital in our digits. The people that rang the landline got fewer and fewer. And fewer. Now the only ones who ever call  are sellers or scammers or strangers. There is no air of anticipation anymore, that's all gone. All that's left is the air of inevitability that the ole bakelite's journey is nearly complete, that it's barely a twist of a dial away from the end of the line.

Land's end - another icon prepares for the skip.

Don't mince yer words, Commissaire!

I'm currently reading Pietr the Latvian, the first of Georges Simenon's 75 novels featuring Commissaire (Jules) Maigret which he penned in 1930 when he were but a lad of 27. Like all the books I've tackled in the series this one is a fine yarn as well as an historical treasure but I have to say I was slightly taken aback by some of the observations Maigret makes about his more, well, unsavoury characters - in particular a down-at-heel immigrant whom he follows while on the case. To wit: 

"Overall the man fitted a type that Maigret knew well: the migrant low-lifer of Eastern European origin who slept in squalid lodging houses and sometimes in railway stations. A type not often seen outside Paris, but accustomed to travelling in third-class carriages when not riding the footboards or hopping freight trains. He got proof of his insight a few minutes later. Fécamp doesn't have any genuine low dives, but behind the harbour there are two or three squalid bars favoured by dockhands and seamen. Ten metres before these places there's a regular café kept clean and bright. The man in the trenchcoat walked right past it and straight into the least prepossessing of the bars where he put his elbow on the counter in a way that Maigret saw right through. It was the straightforwardly vulgar body-language of a guttersnipe. Even if he'd tried, Maigret couldn't have imitated it."

Charming!

So now, put that in yer pipe and smoke it!

Money Laundering ... Soapy Style!

Today is the anniversary of the death of Jefferson "Soapy" Smith, the legendary US con artist whose most infamous scam, the Prize Package Soap Sale, earned him his nickname as well as a pride of place in the annals of US criminal folklore. Smith became notorious in the 1870s for duping entire crowds with the scam which involved him wrapping $1 to $100 bills around selected bars of soap, wrapping plain paper around these bars to hide the money, mixing them with normal bars and then selling each one off for $1 a throw. Usually a plant in the crowd, a shill, would buy the first bar, tear it open, and proclaim that he had won some cash, waving it around for all to see. That would be the cue for a frantic outbreak of frenzied buying to begin. During the proceedings, Soapy would announce that the hundred-dollar bill bar remained in the pile and he would then auction off the remaining soap bars to the highest bidder. Of course using deft sleight-of-hand, he would have hidden all the bars wrapped with money and replaced them with packages holding no cash at all. The only money "won" went to the shills in the crowd and, of course, these were members of his gang! Soapy's scam went on for over twenty years with great success despite extensive press campaigns warning the public to be wary of it and the funds earned from the Soap Sale helped to finance Soapy's other extensive criminal operations. Lord but there's naught as dumb as folk!

More tomorrow ...

Soapy had the authorities in a lather!

PS. I've just added an email link and would be delighted if you'd subscribe to the blog and receive the daily updates.

A Pause for Reflection!

I've just realised that I've been putting up posts on this blog every day for a full month now. Time flies indeed, but I have to say that I've barely noticed it go by and I'm sure the fine weather and the best World Cup in ages have had as much to do with it as all the posting. I've also noticed that more and more people are beginning to have a browse here and that is really refreshing and encouraging. I am really grateful to everyone who's visited for taking the time out to show a bit of support. Many thanks folks, it's much appreciated.

I suppose I'm still foraging around to see how things shape up before I can say for certain what the blog is actually about but when I look back on the past month's work I am beginning to think it's simply about writing - not about the ifs and hows of writing but about the things that work behind the scenes to facilitate it. Perhaps it's about the constant search for things that a writer needs to find or be aware of before he or she can make up a story. I kind of think it's something along those lines but I can't be any more specific than that at the moment.

Still, I'll keep on keepin' on as is until I get to the next bench mark, maybe next month, and reflect again on all that's scrolled before. I'm sure that, by then, it will be clearer in my mind. One thing that is already clear is that the most important motivation for any writer is the anticipation that what is written will be read - there is no point in doing it otherwise so once again many thanks for taking the trouble to stop by.

On reflection!

A Post and a Toast!

This day 57 years ago John Lennon and Paul McCartney met for the first time. The venue was Woolton, Liverpool where Paul had come along to see John's skiffle band, The Quarrymen, play at the St Peter's Church Fête on the invitation of his schoolmate and band member, Ivan Vaughan. McCartney later recalled that the 'grown-up and dissipated character' he met that day was well oiled when they spoke for the first time - a claim refuted by the other Quarrymen even though they admit that beers were had by the band that day. I like the way Phil Norman describes the gravity of the occasion in his relatively recent biography of John - Lennon: The Life.

"More desultory conversation went on while church helpers completed preparations for the Grand Dance or emptied dregs from tea urns unaware of an encounter that was to rank alongside Gilbert's first with Sullivan or Rodgers with Hart."

Their first meeting puts me in mind of many, many first encounters of my own and of the sterling relationships that followed as a result and for which I am both honoured and grateful. So what I'm really trying to propose, what this really is, I suppose, is a post and a toast to friends! Cheers.

An encounter with fête!

When at a loss for words ...

... try to bamboozle your readers, or perhaps that should be viewers, with high-tech feats of astonishing misdirection, sleight-of-hand and dumdee derring do!

Things can get pretty pedestrian at times here in the blogosphere! :)

What's in a (Nick) Name?

Read an interesting piece earlier about surnames, or rather surnames that derive from nicknames! In the days before it was mandatory to have a legal surname (round about the 1300s), people were recognised as much by the nickname's people gave them as for their family names and these often related to their job, their appearance, their demeanour, their temperament or simply by the way they strutted their stuff! The names, which weren't always complimentary, often stuck, particularly in the North of England oddly enough, and in time became formal surnames - as these were increasingly required by bureaucrats to legally identify people the more societies enlarged and developed. Many of those original nicknames live on as surnames today and here are a few:

Belcher comes courtesy of a real person who had a 'lovely face'; Biss, on the other hand, was the opposite. Kay related to a left hander or a citeog as we say here. Read was ginger; Early was noble; Frost was aloof. Dolittle was lazy ... as was Idle. Pratt was clever (the one that got away!). Lamb was meek; Lawless, licentious; Mutton was a dunce. Chubb was fat; Begg was small and Sly and Smellie need no explanation .. at all! Nor does Fox, Stag or Quarrell. On the ruder side, Wagstaff was a medieval ‘flasher’ as was Waghorn and I'll leave it to you to figure out the meaning of both Longstaff and Hardstaff! All the detail comes from A Dictionary of Surnames which lists the origins of over 100,000 names in all the European languages including our own Gaelic. The work is edited by Patrick Hanks and Flavina Hodges. By the way, the nick in nickname comes from the Anglo Saxon word eke meaning "also" or "other".

More tomorrow...

"Stories from today's paper that would make good fictional yarns": # 1

Would-be writers don't always have to look too hard to find good ideas for stories. Sometimes a browse through the paper is enough. Here are just three snippets of news from today's that could easily trigger an idea or two.

1. Behind Chocolate Bars: A former soldier who avoided being caught for years after raiding six sweet shops armed with a knife was finally apprehended after leaving his fingerprints on a bar of chocolate in one of the stores. He was nailed after DNA taken by police over a domestic incident were found to match the prints on the bar. He was sent down for three years.
2. Saul of Tarsas: A man walked into an auction room with a rucksack containing €250K worth of gold which he sold for charity after undergoing a Damascene conversion that convinced him to give to the poor. "Like a modern day Saul of Tarsas, I saw the light," he told the auctioneer.
3. Bus a Guts! A coach driver returning to the UK from France with a school group discovered a teenage stowaway hanging onto the underside of his bus. He'd clung to it for over 80 miles before being noticed and caught. The boy told police that he had come all the way from Sudan to start a new life in the UK. 

Facts forge fiction for sure!

More tomorrow...

Amazing Facts!

I'd like to start the day by telling you five utterly inane things that I didn't know until around about ten minutes ago. So bate your breath and listen up:

1. The longest word created from a single row on the standard keyboard is: TYPEWRITER - which is an amazing coincidence given yesterday's piece.
2. The first product to have a bar code was Wrigley’s gum. Chew on that one!
3. The plastic things on the end of shoelaces are called aglets. Believe it or knot!
4. The average lead pencil will draw a line 35 miles long. Where after there is nothing to compare!
5. The dot over the letter i is called a tittle. Yes, but what about the cross on the t? Hmmm! Surely not a tattle!

So there ye go. Turning into a right ole fountain of knowledge this 'ere blog,eh?!

Happy QWERTY to You!

Today is a special day for writers (and typists) everywhere as it is the 140th anniversary of the first 'modern' commercially successful typewriter, the Remington 1, which went on sale on this day in 1874. The original device, which was designed by Scholes and Gidden, took a while to get noticed and thus catch on as it was a clunky ole affair that required a trained operator, only dealt in block capitals and didn't allow the typist to see what he or she was writing. It also cost the average year's salary of $125 to buy so it's hardly a surprise that only 400 were sold in the first year - primarily to clergymen, lawyers, newspaper editors and authors, one of whom, Mark Twain, called his a "curiosity breeding little joker"*. Still, the genie was out of the bottle and two crucial modifications which were added to forthcoming models - a hand lever to allow the operator roll the paper and a facility to allow both upper and lower case letters to be typed  - proved to be game changers. Reducing the price helped to stir wider interest as well so that by the end of the 1870s the machine was on its way ... and, as they say, the rest is a chronological study of past events! Sadly however, the ole typewriter never really got the glory it deserved at the time because another device came out round about then and stole all of its and the world's thunder. That would have been the telephone! But as things have died down a bit, we can now blow a virtual trumpet in salute of yet another ingenious thing that done changed the world. Clackety clack, qwertyuiop!

Inventor of the typo!


* - It's said that Twain's Tom Sawyer was the first novel ever written on a typewriter.