March 23, 2009
Killing Elizabeth ~ Chapter Eight
When the movie ended, Elizabeth announced that she was hungry.
“Me too,” said Adrian, “but I’m in no condition to help make dinner. You’re on your own.”
Elizabeth groaned lazily.
“I don’t want to cook. I’ve got to leave for the theatre in an hour, we should spend that time together. Let’s order pizza.”
“Fine by me. There’s a two-for-one coupon in my wallet.”
Elizabeth went to pick up the phone, pausing en route to pull Adrian’s wallet from his jacket pocket. It was at exactly this moment that he realised his mistake.
“There’s money in here,” said Elizabeth.
“Hmm?”
“In your wallet. There’s… forty quid in notes, and a load of change. I thought you said the mugger took it all?”
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. Think quickly.
“Oh no, I just gave him what was in my pockets. That must be where you’re getting confused.”
“No, you said, in the hospital. ‘I emptied my wallet’, you said. You said if there was more you’d have let him have it.”
Okay, stay calm. You’ve got Read more...
March 16, 2009
Self-indulgent rambling
Having reviewed the amount of drawing I want to get done by the end of tomorrow, I decided I ought to spend this evening working. I then reviewed whether I wanted to, and decided I didn’t, so I wrote my novel instead. It’s coming along very nicely.
Speaking of the novel, I was determined not to let two chapters go by without doing a proper blog entry in between, and it seems I’ve failed. But it’s taken seven chapters, so I’m not doing too badly. Although entries of which the novel is the subject probably don’t count, so I’d better do another one this week. Unless I move onto a different topic later in this entry, but that seems unlikely as I don’t currently have anything in mind, and I’ve got to go out soon to pick Jess up, so even if I’m inspired I doubt I’ll have time to actually write it.
There’s only one other novel related thing I have to say, which is that my mum’s pointed out that the glacial pace at which I’m posting it, though an inevitable consequence of the glacial pace at which I’m writing it, means that unless you’re taking notes you’ve probably already lost the plot. Where by ‘you’ I mean ‘anyone who’s reading it’, which I realise probably isn’t most of you. Though possibly those of you who aren’t reading that stopped reading this when I warned you I wasn’t going to talk about anything other than that. If not, I congratulate you on your persistence. This must be very dull.
Anyway, I thought I’d address the problem with a catch-up The story so far… type thing every so often. I’ll probably do the first one after chapter ten since that’s a natural break in the story, so you’ve only got to pay attention until then.
I feel I should finish with something slightly less self-indulgent than rambling on about my novel, but I can’t think of anything, so I won’t.
Killing Elizabeth ~ Chapter Seven
Gradually, consciousness dawned.
It took him a couple of minutes to recollect who he was. His identity came back piecemeal as aspects of his life dropped into place; Elizabeth, Norbert, the house, his job, and at last his name. He was Adrian Hadley. Then he remembered Kelly, and sex on a desk, and a scream, and a chase, and four thousand Daleks. Then he remembered the fall.
It was at this point that he became aware of the pain. He found it difficult to pinpoint exactly which bit of him hurt, and realised this was because it was all of him. That had been quite some fall.
He opened his eyes. He was in a hospital. He wondered what happened after he blacked out.
There were nurses milling around, but none of them seemed to have noticed that Adrian was awake. He waited until one passed his bed and tried to call out, but his throat was hoarse and no words came. There was a glass of water on his bedside table, and he leaned over to take a sip. Someone had draped his jacket across the back of a chair and he spotted a folded sheet of A4 protruding from the pocket. Fishing this out, he opened it to find what looked like a page from a paper detailing some ne Read more...
March 9, 2009
Killing Elizabeth ~ Chapter Six
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to be looking for,” said Vern.
They’d taken the stairs to the fourth floor and located a door with ‘RANDOLPH MILLER: MANAGING DIRECTOR’ stamped on a plaque. Upon entry, Lewis sat down at the computer and instructed Vern to search the office for clues.
“Anything that indicates an interest in astronomy. A book, a magazine, a photo of him wearing a Star Trek t-shirt. I don’t know, show some initiative.”
This last was said rather curtly, so Vern lapsed into silence. He scrutinised a bookshelf. Most of the volumes concerned management and accountancy. There were a few on electronics, which might indicate a passion for science generally – if not astronomy in particular – but given the nature of the factory, their presence was as likely for business as pleasure.
There were photos on the desk, so Vern had a look at those. Predictably, they seemed to mainly feature Randolph’s family, with recurring faces Vern supposed were his children and grandchildren and one older gent in a bad wig that was no doubt the man himself. What he couldn’t see were any space shuttles o Read more...
March 5, 2009
Romance
Me and Jess’s going-out anniversary and Valentine’s day come in quick succession. This year, the period that spanned and preceded them both saw me working stupidly long hours, with the result that I failed to do anything romantic for either. Well, I didn’t fail entirely, but the hastily constructed card that I made by squashing flat a toilet roll tube, tearing it along the edge, and drawing a heart on the front with Sudocrem didn’t go down very well for some reason.
So I made up for it by spending last week preparing an extra special Jess Day. I gave her a full English breakfast (which was almost entirely successful, if you overlook the ever so slightly overcooked bacon), a card, a bunch of flowers, a poem about goblins - all the usual things - and a trip to the theatre. To see the most boring play in the world.
I thought it would be good. “You can’t go wrong with a musical comedy by Stephen Sondheim,” I thought to myself. Especially one that got a massive 9.1 out of 10 on IMDB. Well, you can. It was rubbish. To be fair to Mr Sondheim, it was an amateur production, but then the same company did a decent job of Sweeney Todd, so I don’t think they can be held entirely responsible. On the other hand, we did hear other people commenting on how good it was in the interval, so maybe it’s just us. We didn’t stay for act two.
I think she preferred the card I made out of a toilet roll.
March 2, 2009
Killing Elizabeth ~ Chapter Five
Bob Franks had been night watchman at Robotron Toys for six months. It wasn’t a career move he’d anticipated – the job making toilet seats at the plastics factory was going well, and though the pay wasn’t fantastic, he got by. Then the global economy took a downturn, orders were cancelled, and the company responded with a round of redundancies. With his wife expecting, the prospect of unemployment wasn’t exactly appealing and Bob passed a few sleepless nights before learning, to his great relief, that he wasn’t one of those to get the chop.
He thought then that everything was going to be alright. But bills were rising, and with a baby on the way he was soon confronting the fact that his meagre income no longer paid the rent. There was nothing else for it – he’d have to get a second job.
And so he found himself in his current situation: working nine to five at the plastics factory, home to snatch four hours of broken sleep, then up again to start his shift at Robotron. It was an unforgiving schedule, and made a mockery of his home life – he’d barely spoken to his wife for weeks, and things could only get worse once Read more...
