Brushes with fame

If you live in a city like London, occasionally you might find yourself at an event involving someone a little bit famous.  If that person has written a book, there's a good chance they'll be selling copies at the event. So  you might think about buying a copy of it and asking them to sign it for you.

If you go to buy the book, and then the famous person sees you getting out your purse and says "No, no, put that away, tonight I'm giving them away for free", you might think to yourself "Gosh, that's really very generous of him.  How nice!"

 And when he looks down at the table in front of him and realise that he doesn't actually have any books left to give you, and says, "Oh no!  Wait right there, let me see if I can find some more" and then goes off to find his publisher or agent or whoever , who is right over on the other side of  the room, and she gives him a rucksack he has to lug back over to the table past a very crowded bar, and then rummage through in order to find the book he is going to give you,  for FREE, you might find yourself thinking "wow!  That was an AMAZINGLY generous thing to do, going to all that trouble."  

And so, you might say to the famous person who has just gone out of their way to do something very nice for you exactly the same thing you say to anyone who does something extra nice for you, which, if you are me, is "Oh!  You're a star!  Thank you so much!"  

But  the famous person might not hear you properly, and say something like "sorry, I missed that - er.....what did you say?"  So you might say again, "you're a st....."

And then you will realise that in this particular context, the phrase " you're a star" probably sounds less "you've done something I really appreciate"  and more "OH MY GOD! YOU ARE AN ACTUAL CELEBRITY WHO IS ON TELLY AND EVERYTHING AND OH WOW I CAN'T BELIEVE I'M TALKING TO A REAL LIVE PROPER FAMOUS PERSON!"

But you'll probably realise it a split-second too late, by which time you've already called him a 'star' and he probably thinks you're some sort of crazy fan-girl, and you can hardly explain that's not quite what you meant and anyway, now he's waiting for you to tell him your name so he can sign the book he's gone to all that trouble to find for you.  

If all that happens, you'll probably feel a little bit horrendously embarrassed. 

But then,  if the famous person is not only very  generous but also quite kind and incredibly gracious, he might do something very  cool, like this:

And you'll suddenly feel a whole lot better.  

 Even more so when you remember  that the guy in front of you wanted his book signed "from Darth Maul".  

Absurd Inventions

I had a whole pile of things to get done at work today.  While doing one of them, I stumbled across this list of totally absurd inventions, and guess what? Now I have a whole pile of things to get done later in the week.

At first glance, it looked like a pretty unassuming list, with a few mildly odd sounding entries.   But then I started clicking on links, and oh, my word.  They all come with (at times, quite  Professor Branestawm-esque) diagrams, and the ideas are just, well, nothing short of extraordinary, especially when you remember that they've all, apparently, been patented.

Of course, it helps that they're all accompanied by lighthearted, slightly-sarcastic-but-its-sometimes-hard-to-tell explanations which I can't help but hear in my head as if they're being read by George Lamb from Come Dine With Me.

Here's Jacques Fido, which just made me laugh out loud:

And a fashion accessory which never quite caught on, called Angel Ears

" Maybe Albert (the inventor) had big ears and was teased incessantly as a child so he wanted to cover them up. " guesses the commentator.  "Or, maybe Albert was an obsessed Ornithologist with a desire to spread his love of birds through the ultimate fashion ear ornament."

Sports fans might be interested in the Skin Stencil

"Finally, a hat designed for the ultimate fan. Now you can burn your favourite team logo right into your forehead!  That's right, the logo portion your hat's adjustable headband has cutouts allowing the sun to sizzle your skin.   We suggest that you don’t apply any sun block to the part of your forehead that's under the headband and stay in the hot sun all day so tomorrow will truly be a red letter day!" 

(This suggestion is not endorsed by the National Cancer Institute.)

And after a hard day of having your face burned to a crisp in the name of sport, what you'll probably feel like doing is taking a nice long, relaxing fish bath.

Yep, those are actual fish.  Not in the tub with you (I mean, that would be silly!) but swimming around in a transparent walls of your bathtub, so you can see them. 


And so it goes on.  There are literally hundreds of these things, including: a gerbil shirt, a toilet snorkel (for when your high-rise building catches fire... what else?), a cheese-filtered cigarette, various dieting devices including a mouth cage, an alarmed fork and a contraption which won't let your hand get too close to your mouth and a hijacker injector, for aeroplanes.

I moan about my (day) job sometimes, but every now and then it throws up something like this, and suddenly it doesn't seem nearly so bad.

You've Got Mail.....

No, wait.  I mean, I've got mail:

A little parcel of these publicity postcards for Stations - the short story anthology I've contributed to - arrived today.

Here's what they look like on the back:

We have a publication date!  And and ISBN number!  THIS REALLY TRULY IS GOING TO BE AN ACTUAL BOOK!

As you can probably tell, I'm starting to get a bit excited by these postcards.

But not as excited as I was by THIS:

A BADGE!  With my NAME on it!  Which says I am an AUTHOR!

I am way more excited about the badge than I ought to be.  In fact, I'm way more excited about the badge than I thought I was going to be.  Because I knew it was coming; my publisher (my PUBLISHER.  Yes, I KNOW....) sent an email last week, saying she'd had them made up.  To be honest, I was a little dubious.  But now that I've seen mine, I love it.  I'm not saying I'll wear it out in public, necessarily, but I might wear it under my other clothes sometimes.  Kind of like a Superman cape.

STATIONS is, as by now you may have surmised, a collection of short stories inspired by the East London overground line and will be available online and in bookshops from November 29th.  My story was inspired by Hoxton, and more specifically by the wonderful Hoxton Street Monster Supplies.  It's a place very close to my heart for reasons I have been meaning to blog about for ages, and will endeavour to do so very soon.

Speaking of which, I'm very aware that this blog has become one big plug-fest for my own writing lately.  Sorry and etcetera.  It's just that it's all been a bit exciting lately.  I'll try and redress the balance in the next few posts.