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February 26, 2009
My lovely weekend
Having decided to go for a Rasul Exotic Body Treatment for Two, we were faced with the issue of where to have it. There’s one not too far from here, but there’s also one in Stratford-upon-Avon, which I remembered from previous visits being a lovely little town with lots of interesting things to do, so I suggested we book a night in a hotel and make a weekend of it.
We tootled down to Stratford on Friday, and after a walk around the town I was beginning to worry that there was less to do there than I remembered, possibly due to it not being the middle of summer like it was last time I was there, and the RSC not having anything decent on at the minute (really, who wants to see The Tempest? No one, that’s who). “Oh no!” I was thinking to myself. “This weekend’s going to be a disaster, and Jess will hate me for suggesting it, and then she’ll dump me and I’ll turn to drink and die in a gutter!”
But as it turned out, we had a jolly nice time. We had dinner at possibly the BEST RESTAURANT IN THE WORLD. It wasn’t the absolutely best food or the absolutely best service or the absolutely best ambiance or the absolutely best prices that I’ve ever experienced, but it wasn’t far off for any of them, so it probably was the best combination of all those things. And it was right next door to the hotel, so I can’t even criticise the distance. Not that it would really be the restaurant’s fault if we were staying somewhere else.
Then the next day we went and had a nosy in Anne Hathaway’s cottage (she didn’t seem to mind), and thence to the spa for our rasul.
It was great! Jess and I got left in this relaxing temple place, with different coloured muds for rubbing into different bits of our bodies. I resisted the urge to make a Morph. Then while you’re rubbing those in, steam starts to come out of the ceiling and the temperature rises, so it’s a bit like a sauna but dirtier. The idea is that the heat opens your pores and the nutrients from the mud seep in. I presume it’s some special mud they’ve made in a lab, not something they’ve dug up in the garden. I didn’t notice any worms, anyway.
Then when you’re all hot and muddy and sweaty, showers magically switch themselves on and you clean yourself up.
I haven’t really done it justice here, but it was a very relaxing, soothing, romantic and otherwise pleasant experience, and you should do it too.
And now you know all about my lovely weekend.
February 23, 2009
Killing Elizabeth ~ Chapter Four
Lewis had told Vern they were going back to his place, so the troll couldn’t understand why the car had pulled up outside the Kingfisher Hotel.
“This isn’t your house.”
“You thought it a coincidence that I’ve been tracking down the astrolabe for three years and it was in my home town all along? Nothing so convenient, alas. I’ll be staying at the hotel until we lay our hands on it – however long that takes.”
He led Vern to his room. Lewis had certainly settled in; along the desktop Vern counted three apples, four bananas, two bottles of wine, one packet of digestive biscuits, a loaf of bread, a laptop and an unidentifiable machine. Lewis opened a drawer and took out a folder, a wad of paper and a small black case.
“Take a look at these,” he said, handing the folder to Vern. There were two sheets inside. The first was a form with FINGERPRINT RECORD SHEET printed at the top, followed by various fields identifying the subject as one James Jones. The rest of the page was taken up by prints.
“An associate pulled that off the police database for me,” said Lewis.
“Who’s James Jones?” Read more...
February 18, 2009
Plagiarism
I’m rather fond of the Katie Melua song If You Were a Sailboat. You know the one - If you were a cowboy, I would trail you / If you were a piece of wood, I’d nail you to the floor / If you were a sailboat, I would sail you to the shore and so on in a similar vein. But I can’t help feeling she’s ripped off the love song from the musical of Hamlet I wrote ten years ago.
HAMLET
If you were a melon I’d want to ingest you,
If you were a felon I’d want to arrest you,
If you were a sentence I’d want to appeal ya,
Ophelia, Ophelia, I want to, Ophelia!
CHORUS
Oh feel her, oh feel her, he wants to, oh, feel her!
HAMLET
If you were a fountain I’d relish no end you,
If you were a mountain I’d strive to ascend you.
If you were an emerald then I’d try to steal ya,
Ophelia, Ophelia, I try to, Ophelia!
CHORUS
Oh feel her, oh feel her, he tries to, oh, feel her!
HAMLET
If you were a jungle I’d yearn to explore you,
If you were a fungal infection I’d cure you.
If you were a tangerine then I’d want to peel ya,
Ophelia, Ophelia, I want to, Ophelia!
CHORUS
Oh feel her, oh feel her, he wants to, oh, feel her!
HAMLET
Indeed to retire my longing to hold you
And cede the desire of which I have told you,
I’d need or require a countenance steelier,
Ophelia, Ophelia, I long to, Ophelia!
CHORUS
Oh feel her, oh feel her, he longs to, oh, feel her!
Okay, Katie Melua’s version is better.
February 17, 2009
Making good use of the things that we find
Two and a bit years ago I related how, the night before, I’d been dressed up as a womble largely against my will. In the comments a few people demanded pictures, but I didn’t think any existed, so I was unable to oblige.
Well it turns out I was wrong.
February 16, 2009
Blog breakage update
I broke my blog so comments didn’t work. Now I’ve fixed it. So if you tried to leave any, have another go pleasethankyou.
Killing Elizabeth ~ Chapter Three
Vern almost choked on his Coke.
“Steal it? I’m not a thief!”
“Keep your voice down!” urged Lewis. “I expected this reaction, but it’s very short sighted. You’ll change your mind once you’ve thought it through.”
“No, forget it. Sorry mate, I don’t do that sort of thing.”
Vern rose from his seat and was about to make for the exit when Lewis leaned forward, grabbed his t-shirt and pulled him back into his chair. His attempted walkout was motivated not by moral qualms, for he had none, but by the desire to shake his companion’s arrogant confidence. That Lewis had dared to restrain him suggested failure, and yet when the older man spoke again it was with a humility that took Vern by surprise.
“Please, hear me out. I know this isn’t your usual line, but I can’t do it without you.”
“Why not? Why me? I’m nobody.”
“As I said in my email, I’ve been watching you. I like what you do.”
“I don’t do anything,” said Vern defensively. “I work at Poundland.”
“But it’s in your spare time that you come alive, isn’ Read more...
Robots in disguise
It’s taken us a couple of months to get round to it, but we’ve just got back from finishing the mural for my nephew Thomas.
(Clicky for the full gallery)
Yeah, I know, it’s not as exciting as Fireman Sam.
Two down, two to go - Ben and the unborn baby. Ben wants Lego Star Wars, Lego Transformers, Lego Ben 10, Lego Pokemon, and possibly Lego Something Else That I Can’t Remember. Most of those don’t exist.
I suspect the unborn baby will be less picky.
Oh, and we made a snowman.
February 9, 2009
Killing Elizabeth ~ Chapter Two
“I hate you! I wish you were dead!”
“You ungrateful bitch! You wouldn’t last five minutes without me!”
Vern Boyle hunched down on the bed, drawing himself closer to the laptop as though this action might drown out the screams from beyond his door. The barrage of insults and obscenities was nothing new, but familiarity didn’t make them any easier to ignore.
His best bet was immersing himself in his own little world. To that end, he opened a new tab in his browser and considered his next victim. He settled on the denizens of Missing-Person-Seekers.com, a forum for the exchange of tips and techniques on tracing estranged loved ones. There was a guy calling himself Train_Lover, a regular on the site who’d done some time and been unable since release to contact his only relative, a grown-up son. With a view to revealing himself as the kid, Vern had been posting on the forum for a month or so – innocent, low-key posts, agreeing or sympathising with other users, building plausibility for a greater pay-off. He’d been careful to reveal little about his character but that he was searching for his dad – nothing unusual on Read more...
February 5, 2009
I shall use my powers for EVIL
When you visit a website, it can find out various bits and pieces about your computer - what operating system you’ve got, your screen size, your local time zone, stuff like that - things that might be useful in helping the site decide how to display itself for you. What it can’t find out - because it would be, like, a gross invasion of privacy - is what other websites you’ve been visiting. Or so I thought.
But it occurred to me this morning that there’s a way in which it could, to a limited extent, be done. So I wrote a bit of code to see if it worked, and it does. Click here to see what it can find out about YOU. Don’t worry, it’s not storing it all in my database so I can bribe you with it later. The scary part is that it could.
After I’d done it I told Jess and she pointed out that surely I’m not the first person to think of this. I had a google and sure enough plenty have come before me, so it was a bit of a waste of time really - though I’ve been a bit sneakier than any of the other people I’ve come across. But then it always was going to be a waste of time, because I can’t think of a single application for it that isn’t PURE EVIL. The most benign use I can think of is finding out which of your visitors have been looking at your competitors’ websites so you can offer a better deal to those who are shopping around, and even that seems a bit too dodgy for my liking.
It’s tough being a genius with a conscience. It’s like being a pacifistic ninja.
February 2, 2009
Killing Elizabeth ~ Chapter One
Kelly Walsh could no longer feel her arse.
She’d been slumped in the doorway of Jack’s Potato Shack for two hours. She wore thermal underwear, but it was threadbare, and this was mid-October. It was raining, and cold, so cold. She was so sick of the cold.
People with homes didn’t know what it meant to be cold. People with homes could go back to them when it got a bit nippy, crank up the radiator and settle down with a mug of steaming hot chocolate. Christ, what Kelly would give for a mug of hot chocolate! Her life afforded her no such luxuries: for Kelly, cold was the greatest enemy, one that stalked her for most of the year, never far away, never letting up, and never showing any mercy. And so she sat, shivering and numb, with nothing to look forward to but the still colder night, and with no clear idea of when she might next feel any sensation in her buttocks.
So far she’d made two pounds and forty-seven pence.
She wasn’t a panhandler, not really. If asked she’d say she got by on her wits, with a little help from her friends and a lot of meals at drop-in centres. Of late, though, she’d grown wary of cha Read more...
February 1, 2009
Sand, snow, mud
I’ve decided once and for all to blog my novel, in the hope of getting lots of useful feedback to make it even better than it already is, if such a thing is possible. I realise that’s a fairly optimistic hope - really, who wants to read a novel on the internet? - but if nothing else, the knowledge that someone might be reading it will encourage me to up my game. The plan is that a chapter will appear every Monday morning for the next nine months or thereabouts, which is another bit of optimism, because so far it’s taken me four months to write the first quarter. The maths suggests a lot of late nights ahead.
So of course now I feel obligated to do lots of normal entries in order that they’re not eclipsed by my little tale of murder and astrolabes, lest it scare away the vast majority of you who don’t want to read it.
Last night Jess went to a beach themed party where the seaside atmosphere was recreated with sand made from bits of polystyrene. She seems to have come home with most of it clinging to her clothes, because now it’s all over the house. If you ask me it looks more like snow than sand, but that might be because we’ve spent the afternoon out in the actual snow at Brimham Rocks. This was mainly an excuse for Jess to play with the fancy SLR camera she bought with her Christmas money that we haven’t got round to taking out anywhere yet.
She took a good one of some random strangers on a rock. What the world needs is cameras that can send photos to one another via bluetooth - if they don’t exist already, which for all I know they might - so if you happen to take a nice piccy of a stranger - and they happen to have their camera with them, and it also happens to have this fancy bluetooth magic - you can let them have a copy of it. Which I suppose you could do anyway, by putting your memory card in their camera and transferring the picture to the camera’s own memory, but I’ve never been in a situation where that has seemed like a desirable thing to do, so maybe it’s a rubbish idea after all. It seemed like quite a good one at the time.
Anyway, if any camera manufacturers are reading and want to nick it, feel free.
If you were a very good boy or girl and clicked on the Brimham Rocks link up there, you’ll have noticed from the date of our last visit that it’s very nearly our anniversary. We were going to do something special, but we left it a bit late to book, and in the end the only time we were able to do what we wanted to do is the weekend after the weekend after next, which we will therefore be spending in Stratford-upon-Avon, staying at a fancy hotel and covering ourselves in mud. Unfortunately that means I’ll miss this year’s annual SimonG.org meet. I’ll come next year, I promise. Unless I’m covering myself in mud again.
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