1000 Posts

Well I never…1000 posts.

Well I never, this is post number 1000, and I’m not really sure where to start really.

I don’t think I will linger on why I started, I think I wrote about that somewhen once here if you’re interested, and it seems like 5 minutes since I wrote my 100th post so to get to a thousand is pretty fab.

As a writing journey it has been so much more rewarding and so much more fun than I could ever have imagined. Some days I find myself bursting with limericks an others its flash fiction but barely a day goes by that I don’t have something I want to put down on paper.

Fitting it all into a busy work and family life is never easy, and some days it takes a real effort and a lack of sleep to get written what I want to share. Last month I penned a 35000 word story to M’s fabulous prompts yet so far this month time seems to have escaped me a little and all I have managed is a barrage of limericks and haiku. There have also been loads of poems, posts about my life, pictures of where I live and a few on dieting even. Whatever it is I have loved writing every one and they all thrill me equally.

The biggest surprise for me throughout though has been the people. You lot. I think I wrote about it here but I cannot stress enough how important I have found the support of anyone and everyone who for whatever reason has chosen to follow or read me. I cant name you all but you know who you are. Thank you. Throw in all the wonderful people I have been able to follow (and I wish I had time to read and follow more than I do) and it all adds up to a most pleasant surprise indeed.

So what next then I ask myself? I am.not the most introspective of types so mostly I will just keep muddling on.

Well I am going to do a couple of books this year I think. One on Limericks of course (given that I have written over 350 of them), and I intend to turn the In-Between thingy into a novella and who knows what else. This certainly feels very much like the beginning only so thanks for sticking with me so far I hope you enjoy what is to come.

Michael x

Toilet Paper Troubles

Read this before I am forced to delete it…

M has another month of fab prompts that you can see here

Today it is Toilet paper troubles.


 

I saw the prompt and my mind instantly went back to an event a few years ago now that you might like.  You also might not but it’s a true story either way.

It was a lovely summers day and I remember being sat in the living room, as we English are prone to do when we have good weather, when my eldest could be heard laughing hysterically at the top of the stairs.  I’m talking out of control belly laugh.  He was about 7 at the time, and Tom my youngest about 4.

“What’s so funny Sam” I shout up the stairs and he can’t answer, simply pointing down the stairs and out into the garden.  I looked and was at first uncertain until I noticed Tom wandering around the garden with his trousers around his ankles trailing a good ten feet of soiled toilet paper behind him hanging from his bottom.

Obviously my first instinct was to grab my camera to get a good video and as Sam continued to howl hysterically I headed down the garden to capture the moment for posterity.

At this point my wife was alerted to something going on and I heard a cry of distress from the upstairs window an the thundering of feet down the stairs as sh and Sam hurried down the back steps and into the garden too.

“What the bloody hell is going on” she shouted *or something like that) “and why the hell are you filming it and not cleaning up.  Curiously that wasn’t a question that had crossed my mind.  Perhaps that just shows how different men and women are.

Before I know it a hasty investigation reveals that Sam had tossed Tom a loo roll when he said he needed to go (we only had one loo  in the house at the time which Sam was using) and told him to go in the garden.  Which Tom did.

“Get some carrier bags” she says to me “and put that bloody camera away.”

The look on her face suggested that she was not to be trifled with so I hurried into the house returning with bags to use to clean up the mess.  By this point Tom had pointed out where he had relieved himself and the wife took one of the bags to pick up his leavings. 

Probably should point out at this point that I have a quite terrible gag reflex and am prone to heaving and lurching at the sight of bodily fluids which would explain why I begin to gag, eyes watering, as she attempts to pick up the remains of Tom’s lunch. 

“Just help will you and pick up that toilet roll” she says pointing to the yards of soiled twin ply littering the garden.  I respond by gagging uncontrollably as I near it, which in turns sets off Sam who himself starts to gag.

“What is wrong with you people” she shouts as we both stand there gagging as she ties the bag full of Toms number two but this sight is simply too much for Sam who suddenly starts to projectile vomit across the garden.

“Oh god no “ she shouts panicked clutching a bag of the youngest’s poo as I crack up unable to do anything other that alternate between laughing and gagging, “Just help will you, god what are the neighbours going to think.”

At this point we were about to find out not what the neighbours thought but certainly what their dog thought as she trotted along and quite merrily began to eat Sam’s vomit.

It is all very much a blur from that point on but I know there was screaming and shouting and the dog looked most satisfied with whatever Sam had had for lunch and I eventually stopped gagging though it was too late to recover the position.

It wasn’t long after that we started planning to have the second bathroom put in.

 

 

 

A Sprinkle of Balderdash

M has another month of fab prompts that you can see here

Today it is A sprinkle of Balderdash.


For those of you who might have seen my blog in the last month you will have seen that I wrote a 30000 word story, day by day using M’s prompts. Given that my preferred medium of expression is the glorious 5 lines of a limerick, and the longest post I have ever done was about 500 words, I am not sure where the confidence came from but there you go.

Mostly it started out as waffle and balderdash but as the month went on I really rather enjoyed it and whilst it is not quite the 50000 words NANOWRIMO might ask of you it’s a start, so I thought I would share a few thoughts on the experience.

  • It was so important to make sure I wrote every day. I got behind after a weekend of enjoying the royal wedding and it was so hard to catch up so should I do it again I would ensure that time is put aside at all costs.
  • I discovered afterwards that there are two types of writers. Those that plan and the ‘pantsers’. ‘Pantsers’ are apparently people who make fly by the seat of their pants and plan very little. I think I lean more towards being a ‘pantser’.
  • Encouragement really matters. Those wonderful people amongst you who took time to read and comment, M for just doing the prompts, Dronsta who really helped with advice or people on Twitter who posted things on their own timelines which I found encouraging – it all really motivated me when I was struggling.
  • Editing can come later, this was pretty much a public first draft but getting the draft down became such a motivator. I can now revisit and do whatever I want with it but it is mine to play with at my leisure.
  • I had only ever written short flash fiction pieces before and the idea of writing 1000 words was massive daunting for me but day by day, line by line, I found that the stamina built pretty quickly and by the end I could churn out an unedited 2500 words in about an hour and a half.
  • When I completed it I wished I was a dog because It was such a thrill that I would happily have licked my own bollocks, and not just for hygiene reasons I tell you.
  • For a few days afterwards I have found it really hard to write. Oddly I found myself going through quite a few emotions having put so much into something over a short period. At times I felt stupid for doing it, others proud, and I really missed it which made doing anything else feel pointless. I did a bit of reading and this is apparently normal it seems.

So, if you’re wondering whether you can do it, absolutely you can just put some time aside, find people to support you and write, write, write…

Up yours Alanis Morisette

In 1995 Alanis Morisette went on and on about things that aren’t ironic being very much so. 

In 1995 Alanis Morisette went on and on about things that aren’t ironic being very much so.  All that nonsense about rain on your wedding day and a free ride when you’ve already paid.  That’s not ironic, it’s just poor weather – something she could quite well have foreseen by checking a weather forecast and bad timing.  I actually don’t think the woman has a clue what irony actually is.

I will tell you what irony is though shall I.  Irony is when you write a post about backing up and then install a WordPress widget as part of the process and that widget causes a major issue with your WordPress site which in due course necessitates the use of that back up to fix the issues the back up process caused.

It even caused my blog to lose the ability to have people follow it which the WordPress folk explained was should have been expected when installing a widget or downloading a non WordPress theme on my plan and they also very kindly acknowledged that yes, they probably ought to point this out.  Good of them I thought.

5 days later, a reset of my site to the 9th of April and an ongoing hassle with trying to get things back to normal and hopefully I will soon be able to get back to some writing again.  Lessons learned I guess…Not really sure what they are yet though maybe Alanis has a song about it.

What do you see?

A moment of your time please…

I seem to be having a few problems with WordPress at the moment. Just yesterday I was told that I no longer had a follow button on my website because I had chosen to add a widget. What sort of world is it where you would have a Blog but not have the option for somebody to follow it? Honest. Today though I’m just wondering whether you would mind leaving me a comment if you read this post as to what you saw when you were trying to get to it. Is it like everybody elses blog where you see a link in the reader and you click on it and you’re taken to the piece that I have written? Or, more annoyingly, do you see a link similar to the one in the header and below which asks you to follow a link to view the post.

A seemingly unnecessary second click to get to the peace that I have written. If you wouldn’t mind just letting me know what you saw and maybe whether you were in the reader or finding my post another way say perhaps through an email . It would be most appreciated because the WordPress happiness engineers seem to be really struggling to help me with this.

Back it up baby

such a relief…

I’m not writing at the moment.  I am instead doing something I should have done long ago and in fact this should have been part of my ritual from day 1 of writing this blog.  As a programmer by trade I should know better yet each night I go to bed and still almost every word I have written in 9 months of blogging remains without back up.

I have written more than 800 posts in that time, tens and tens of thousands of words, hundreds of ideas poured onto the page yet I do so with little regard for protecting it from chance or stupidity.  The thought of losing it all now is just bowel churningly awful as I intend to put a load of into into a number of books this year.

When I started my blog I did not really think much beyond signing up to wordpress and then beginning to type.  To this day that is mostly what I do with very little plan or real agenda.

I realise that you can export your entire Blog using WordPress functionality, and this I did though I will admit that I think there may well be an issue with the file as I am encountering all manner of issues trying to export it from XML.  Instead of buggering around with the file I instead chose to open every single post I have made and copy it to an appropriate word document (one for poems, another for flash fiction etc) and then save that both locally and to the cloud.

I realise there are better more efficient ways of doing this but if 15 years of programming have taught me anything, it is that if you don’t back up regularly you will get your arse spanked on this matter before too long.  It will still take me a couple of days to complete but already I feel far happier knowing that I am not leaving such things to chance and I will most certainly be far more disciplined in such matters going forward.

I’m sure you all back everything up though right.  Probably just me.

ART – Rogue Trooper by Mike Collins

This is a piece I picked up at Thought Bubble in Leeds a couple of years ago.  I think it set me back a hundred pounds and was well worth every penny. Its from the ‘Boneyard’ story line written by Gordon Rennie and illustrated by Mike Collins.

Rogue first appeared in Prog 228 in 1981, created by Gerry Finley-Day and Dave Gibbons he continues to feature to this day.  Such a fan am I that I actually have a Rogue inspired tattoo that I will have to write about sometime.

I just love the piece and how it captures Rogue plus all 3 of his Bio Chip buddies Bag, Helm and Gunner.

Though I continue to search for a Cam Kennedy Rogue to add to my collection they are a rare thing so I shall stick with this wonderful piece until then.

Prog 3 – 12th of March 1988

I have a fair collection of 2000AD progs.  Okay by a fair amount I mean them all, or at least all of the weeklies at least going all the way back to 1977. I didn’t collect them all each week myself and will write more about my acquisition another time but for today I thought I would share Prog3.  Why 3?  Well because I wanted to keep 1 and 2, which featured Dredd for the first time, for another time.

I am no student of these things and cannot truly do justice to the history of this most wonderful work but what I am most happy to do is to share from the huge piles of them scattered around my home.

It was published on the 12th of March 1977 costing 8p, and the stories featured can be seen below.  With a Colour front and back cover and double page middle spread it is still a thing of beauty to hold even today.  It smells amazing too and has lasted so well for something forty years old.  Sadly my copy doesn’t have the ‘Red Alert’ free gift but I don’t really mind, I collect them to read them and am less concerned with condition and such.  Click on the pictures below to take a look.HARLEM HEROES

Featuring Pat Mills’ FLESH, INVASION, M.A.C.H. 1, John Wagner’s Dredd and DAN DARE from Frank Hampson it packed a real punch.  Interesting, at this early stage there was no credit given  with the now familiar credits to artist, writer and letterer only appearing in later progs.

A Few Days Off

Those of you who have followed me for any length of time will know I love to post.  Since I discovered blogging I have enjoyed almost every minute and am happy posting as many times a day as inspiration takes me.

For the last few days though I have taken some time away and just let a few scheduled pieces trickle through.  I’m still as inspired as I was but I just felt frightfully tired and was busier than normal at work and therefore decided to concentrate on simply sleeping more.   I have never been one for a lot of sleep but this week I have craved it terribly and am thoroughly enjoying the idea of an early night.  Instead of the 5 or 6 I usually get by on I have been aiming to get more in the region of 7 to 8 and I feel a lot better for it.

I am looking forward to getting back into the swing of things with my writing but right now I am just going to keep writing down ideas and scribbling in my notebook and I will return to writing in a couple of days.

Right now though it’s time for bed 🙂

 

A twinge of fate – March Prompts 25/31

A brief meander

M’s writing prompts for March came with the following instructions:

“…set your timer for ten minutes and begin writing about one of the prompts listed below. Don’t worry about spelling, punctuation, neatness, or anything like that; just write!”

Let us see what whimsical nonsense I can whip up in ten minutes…

You can see the prompts here.


I’m not a believer in predestination, but I know people are, and that’s great.  In fact, I am not a believer in much other than what I can see or what can be proven.

I used to believe in all sorts of stuff, but no more.  I gave that lark up a few years ago and whilst I’m still working on parts of what I believe I find that mostly, beyond that which can be proven, I think we’re a huge stroke of luck and in this mind mindbogglingly large universe we are very much a ripple in a vast ocean of  chance.

Now I know I should probably have a better answer than that but you know what, I don’t.  A friend of mine insists we are here for a good time not a long time and I like that.  I am not talking pure hedonistic pleasures, simply the pursuit of that which makes you happy.

I reckon that when we’re dead we are simply no more and whatever energy courses through us is released when we are disposed of in which ever way we might choose.

I know it is simple and that lots of people have compelling arguments to the contrary but I don’t really care because I have found a peace that I never had at any other point in my life and I’m rather happy with that.

 

 

 

Dieting. 7.

A new dawn?

So either I have absolutely no will power or I am possessed by a rather hungry demon who insists on eating crisps for breakfast and considers a slack handful of sausages and a coke a mid day snack.

I last wrote about dieting in December and I felt pretty motivated back then.  I still feel pretty motivated now to be honest, but I think it is important to not confuse motivation for actions.  I am motivated to do many things but that does not mean I act.  It took me thirty years to take up writing so stopping eating squirty cream from the can is not going to happen overnight.  Saying that overnight is normally when the squirty cream action takes place.

Today though I have woken up with a new motivation.  Mostly I have spent the morning lingering in bed or writing and as it came to lunch time I realised that I had not yet eaten so I figured that probably technically counts as abeing on a diet so yes, the diet is back on.

I have definitely put on weight since I last wrote, I can feel it in the way my clothes fit me even less than they did previously and I can feel it in the way I move.  Not a lot, but enough to tell me that at my age, and given that I spend a lot of my time at a desk, this weight loss lark is only going to get trickier and trickier as I get older.  I imagine having bacon sandwiches every Friday doesn’t help either, but mostly It’s probably down to age and metabolism.

Not the Chinese takeaway I had last night.  Definitely not that.

I love food so not eating is not an option, and having dabbled with dieting forever I think I am going to do my best to stick to Slimming World.  There are eggs, lean bacon and chopped tomatoes in the kitchen which I think I shall make.  I know its not as good as bran or some such but god have you eaten bran?  I’d rather die a bulbous monstrosity who has to wash himself with a rag on a stick than force that down my gullet.  I once took too large a spoon full of the stuff when I was trying to eat more of it to prevent myself dying from bowel cancer, something that kills a lot of men in my family, and it  actually made me gag so difficult was it to chew.  Like a proper eye watering “take it all” kind of gag.

No thanks.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

 

 

 

 

Dribbles of delight – March Prompts 24/31

Not at all about ejaculation. Honest.

M’s writing prompts for March came with the following instructions:

“…set your timer for ten minutes and begin writing about one of the prompts listed below. Don’t worry about spelling, punctuation, neatness, or anything like that; just write!”

Let us see what whimsical nonsense I can whip up in ten minutes…

You can see the prompts here.


 

There are times when a prompt will pop up ad I simply think to myself “No Michael, you know how this is going to turn out so just stop right there.”

I don’t have a particularly filthy mind, but I do like to say what I think.  I take a degree of pride in pushing boundaries, testing sensibilities and poking things that should not be poked.  I do however do my best to do so with a degree of humour and a modicum of taste.

I shall therefore leave this one be and just move along quietly because I do still have a certain amount of self control.

Just to be clear in case you were wondering though, it was going to be a toss up between a poem about a chap with an extreme case of premature ejaculation or a woman who discovers the joys of female ejaculation for the first time.

Problem was, for the latter at least, I would have needed to do some research and the wife and kids use my laptop quite regularly so I really did not fancy having to explain the content of my browser to either.

It’s a pity really because lush, rush and gush all rhyme quite wonderfully and you know I would have loved the opportunity to explain that “With shock and surprise, it flew into his eyes, and he screamed “help I think I’ve gone blind!”

But I won’t, because I am better than that…

Nonsensical Hodgepodge – March Prompts 23/31

Curtain twitchers beware

M’s writing prompts for March came with the following instructions:

“…set your timer for ten minutes and begin writing about one of the prompts listed below. Don’t worry about spelling, punctuation, neatness, or anything like that; just write!”

Let us see what whimsical nonsense I can whip up in ten minutes…

You can see the prompts here.


Squirty McWhirty was really quite dirty

And Rodger her husband quite plain

He would dream of steam trains

They would fill up his brain

Whilst his wife quite love filth, kink and pain

 

Next door lived the Cooks she was obsessed with books

While her fella was quite into Cars

And they seemed quite at peace

The plain folk on the street

Though he also quite loved wearing bras

 

Down at house 22 there was Mr Rabu

Who’s wife disappeared last May

He said she was in Spain

But go check out the drain

You’ll find parts still not quite washed away

 

And they all quite suspect that there’s likely a sect

Who reside at the house near the park

Theres odd comings and goings

Nasty toings and froings

And oft candles and screams in the dark

 

Then there’s Darren and Paul who both work at the Mall

Vegans both, own a really nice home

But when push comes to shove

You know they’re so in love

Don’t like meat but they sure love the bone

 

A quite curious lot I assume that you’ve got

A good feel for the folk on this street

But don’t judge please be kind

We’re all different you’ll find

Smile and nod if you ever do meet

Sniffles and Snuffles – March Prompts 22/31

Vegetarians may object. The carnivores may not.

M’s writing prompts for March came with the following instructions:

“…set your timer for ten minutes and begin writing about one of the prompts listed below. Don’t worry about spelling, punctuation, neatness, or anything like that; just write!”

Let us see what whimsical nonsense I can whip up in ten minutes…

You can see the prompts here.


Sniffles and snuffles

fat pigs that love truffles

And turnips and carrots and swedes

They’ll eat slops and scoff bread

Cabbage both green and red

And leftovers and all that you leave

 

They think wow what a life

With this farmer and wife

As they roll in the mud oh such bliss

Every day they grow fat

What is better that that

They insist what a great life is this

 

Then one day Truffles aint there

Snuffles, nose in the air

Does despair but’s distracted as hell

For aroma divine

Cooking flesh of the swine

Snuffles slavers oh my what a smell…