Uncategorized

In which NanoWriMo singularly fails to eat my life…

/ saxonbullock2000 / 2 Comments

Work always ends up getting in the way. It’s one of those things you can’t help. My burst of 5,000 words in a day on Monday ended up with me shaky on Tuesday, and while Wednesday was much better (3,000 words) and Friday almost as good, a blizzard of work has gotten in the way. Thursday was supposed to be the day for a job interview – a Christmas Temp job that will, if succesful, be taking up my weekends, and a few potential extra days here and there between now and Christmas. Unfortunately, thanks to a logistic shift, it got moved from Thursday afternoon to Monday morning – and of course, life being what it is, I’ve got a stack of work that urgently needs to be finished by Monday morning.

My NanoWriMo total is, right now, 10678 words. I won’t be able to do any more writing until at least Tuesday, but I am continuing to have some useful thoughts about the book. Particularly, I’ve rescinded one particular plot device I was going to employ, which means I’ve now got an energetic and strong female antagonist with which to endanger my main character for most of the book – hurrah!

I’m also currently engaged in updating my website, and carrying out various other details. Certain aspects of this life are almost – almost – starting to feel normal. Anna and I are certainly getting on well, and I am at least doing okay in making ends meet (as long as one particular delayed invoice does eventually get paid). I can’t pretend there aren’t moments where I feel horribly lonely, and where I miss George more than I can say… but I have to get through them. And, in certain ways, it’s that entire period of my life that I miss, and the fact that any potential for it to continue or to improve is gone. But it’s better that we did this than try to stay together and end up hurting both of us. I want her to be happy, and no matter how hard it may be for me right now, I want myself to be happy too. It’s going to be a long road, but I’m hopeful that eventually, I’m going to get there.

If you’re looking for a man who loves danger, to whom love is a stranger… THIS MAN IS THE ONE!!!

/ saxonbullock2000 / 1 Comment

I was already planning on not doing much today, and general exhaustion and tiredness didn’t help. So, I curled up on the sofa, and split my time between reading The Clan Corporate by Charles Stross (for a book review – and thank god I’d read the previous ones, as it’s fun, but it is in danger of getting overcomplicated…), and bathing in the sheer joy and pulp lunacy that is Adam Adamant Lives! The absolute definition of cult viewing, it’s a creaky yet hugely entertaining 1966 comedy adventure that was partly aimed as the BBC’s answer to The Avengers, and stars Gerald Harper as a Edwardian swashbuckling adventurer who’s unexpectedly frozen for decades, and when defrosted finds himself in Swinging Sixties London, where there are plenty of criminals, gangsters and evil-doers to battle. In many ways it’s utterly cliched, dated and ludicrous, and yet it’s also packed full of genuine charm, with Harper being an impossibly gentlemanly leading man, and some of the most outrageous camp humour imaginable, as well as plenty of entertaingly awful fight sequences. The kind of show it’s easy to laugh at, and yet you can’t help but embrace for all its joys and faults, Adam Adamant Lives certainly cheered me up this afternoon (especially in the moment where I got to the end of one particularly offbeat and stylish episode, dealing with a deadly group of charitable ladies who were bumping off politicians using mind control, and was somewhat amazed to discover that it had been directed by a youthful Ridley Scott…). So, here for your delectation is the hilarious Bond-style theme tune (sung by Kathy Kirby), accompanied by the equally hilarious title sequence (which couldn’t be more Sixties if it tried) and a somewhat random collection of clips. All together now: “BOLD… as a knight in white ARMOUR….”

They seem to have had an Election, don’t you know?

/ saxonbullock2000 / Leave a comment

With the entire blogosphere exploding with joy, it seems slightly redundant to say anything other than “Hurrah!” about the US Election – although it’s nice to see my innate cynicism proved wrong, it was great to wake up to find out the successor to George W. Bush is (a) not a Republican and (b) actually seems to have a brain, and of course it’s satisfying to see the Republicans being shown the door after the mess they’ve made over the last nine years. These are politicians we’re talking about, so it’ll be educational to see how much actual change happens (Anyone who remembers the euphoria surrounding the New Labour landslide all those years ago will also remember how that all ended up), but I’m a little more optimistic about the state of the world than I was, and it was great to wake up to some genuinely good news (even if my sleep last night was appalling, and I was wide awake at about 4am).

The only other election-related moment was where I was pondering the whole aspect of there still being plenty of people in the US who might not be jumping through hoops at the idea of a black President, and was having West Wing S1 finale flashbacks – when I suddenly realised that the reason the actress Elizabeth Moss who plays Peggy in the superlative Mad Men has always looked so damned familiar is that she also played Bartlett’s teenage daughter Zoe in The West Wing. Somehow, at a time when it’s easy for me to get depressed about personal issues, this odd bit of succesful remembrance cheered me up no end. Life is officially strange…

Nothing Left To Do But Dance

/ saxonbullock2000 / 1 Comment

5033 words today on NanoWriMo. Trouble is, I think it’s left me somewhat the worse for wear. I woke up this morning feeling somewhat tired, and I’m now even worse. Things are getting on top of me, I’m feeling lonely and easily upset, and even the couple of bits of good news that happenned today didn’t really cheer me up. It’s a tiredness thing – I simply haven’t yet caught up with the fatigue from last week, so I’m going to take tomorrow as an official day off and do as little as possible. I was hoping to do a couple of big posts tonight, but they’ll have to wait. I have to believe that things are going to get better – it’s just a little difficult keeping that going in my mind right now. Things will improve. Just not right now…

No Sleep Till Ikea

/ saxonbullock2000 / 1 Comment

An odd day today, caused by an enforced watch of the decidedly below-par Christmas movie Fred Claus (watched for a review) – and when a pretty poor film manages to push your emotional buttons, it’s certainly a sign that not all is absolutely fine. I was watching it for a review (certainly, there was little pleasure involved), and the review is done, so most things are now relatively fine and dandy. This afternoon was a trip to Ikea to help Anna pick out a new wardrobe for my room – we eventually backed off getting a towering 2001-style monolith of a wardrobe, but the new one (which shall be ordered online in the next 24 hours) is still pretty damn big, and should help lots with my storage situation in the room. I’ve also reached some firm conclusions about Christmas, and am feeling somewhat better about the situation as a result – I know the kind of Christmas I want, and I’m going to go ahead and make it happen. Ikea was an odd experience, packed full of some frighteningly useful furniture at scarily low prices, and we returned for a meal, an episode of Jeeves and Wooster and a further Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes (expect a HolmesWatch update soon).

NanoWrimo News: 1,066 words so far, almost all of them uniformly ‘orrible. I am, however, aiming to buckle down to at least a handful of serious writing days from Tuesday on, so I’ll see if I can’t kick myself into gear then…