A year ago last Thursday, I was in Edinburgh for the festival. That's where I was last weekend, too, as it happens. One of the best shows I saw this time around was a tribute to Flanders and Swann.
F+S are only a recent-ish discovery for me, and the fact that I've missed out on so many years of listening to them is incredibly annoying. I try not to dwell on it too much.
It was quite tricky choosing just one of their songs, because they're all brilliant, but I think this is really sweet. Besides, when did you last hear a love song about a warthog? No, I thought not.
Sunday, 29 August 2010
Friday, 27 August 2010
The Canterbury Tales: A Bluffer's Guide part 14
I'll let you into a secret - I have no clue what this next tale is all about. And I'm summing it up from memory and I'm in a bit of a hurry because it's Friday night and I do have a life, occasionally, and tonight is one of those occasions. As always (although I have forgotten to mention it recently), and probably more importantly than normal today, don't rely on me for any proper facts and analysis. That's what Peter Ackroyd is for.
The Second Nun's Tale: Cecelia, when she is not busy breaking the hearts and shaking the confidence of Messers A. Garfunkel and P. Simon, is busy being a virgin. She marries Valerian which makes it a bit tricky maintain her virginity, and even though she wears an ugly old shirt of hair under her wedding dress, she's a bit worried that this won't be enough to discourage him. So she makes up a story.
I have an angel watching over me she tells him. If you lay so much as a finger on me, he will kill you. But go ahead and love and respect me if you like - he won't have a problem with that. But no touching.
Valerian, understandably, wants to see the angel before he believes her. He's convinced that she's actually in love with another man, which she isn't, she's just, well... a bit weird, if I'm honest.
Anyway, Cecelia agrees, but says first he must be baptised, and she gives him instructions to visit some old guy living in a cave. He does what he is told and finds the old cave-dweller (whose name is Urban; am I the only one who finds this super ironic?) and gets baptised, and sees the angel, so I gues Cecelia wasn't making it up after all.
Valerian comes back and tells his brother what happened and his brother sees the light too, and Valerian takes him off to be baptised by Urban. Basically what happens for the rest of the story is lots of people become converted to religion and then get themselves murdered. In that order.
The two brothers became preachers, and got quite well known. They also got beheaded. Maximus, one of the officers responsible, felt so bad about this he also turned religious, and went around converting people in their place. When Almachius, who was the guy in charge, found out about this he ordered Maximus to be killed as well. Which he was, but I forget how.
Almachius decides the best thing to do would be to banish Cecelia to some far-flung corner of the earth, employing that principle of justice favoured by five year olds everywhere: "well, she started it". But by now the court officers have all turned to religion too and they refuse to take her away. Finally he manages to convince them to at least set up a meeting with Cecelia, during which he demands she renounce her faith. She won't, of course, and says all sorts of things to goad him about how stupid and powerless he is. To be fair, she has a point.
He condems her to death, and tells his men he wants her to be "cleansed by fire." He must have found some new men from somewhere, because these ones are prepared to follow his instructions to the letter (heathens!): they put her in a bath and try to set fire to her. She won't burn, so they try and cut her head off, but that doesn't work either.
There's some sort of convenient plot point (sorry, I mean long-standing rule of the kingdom) which says that it's illegal to try and chop someone's head off more than three times, so the soldiers leave Cecelia with her neck all mangled, and blood spurting everywhere. Eventually after three days she dies, but not before she converts lots more people and asks for her house to be turned into a church.
The Second Nun's Tale: Cecelia, when she is not busy breaking the hearts and shaking the confidence of Messers A. Garfunkel and P. Simon, is busy being a virgin. She marries Valerian which makes it a bit tricky maintain her virginity, and even though she wears an ugly old shirt of hair under her wedding dress, she's a bit worried that this won't be enough to discourage him. So she makes up a story.
I have an angel watching over me she tells him. If you lay so much as a finger on me, he will kill you. But go ahead and love and respect me if you like - he won't have a problem with that. But no touching.
Valerian, understandably, wants to see the angel before he believes her. He's convinced that she's actually in love with another man, which she isn't, she's just, well... a bit weird, if I'm honest.
Anyway, Cecelia agrees, but says first he must be baptised, and she gives him instructions to visit some old guy living in a cave. He does what he is told and finds the old cave-dweller (whose name is Urban; am I the only one who finds this super ironic?) and gets baptised, and sees the angel, so I gues Cecelia wasn't making it up after all.
Valerian comes back and tells his brother what happened and his brother sees the light too, and Valerian takes him off to be baptised by Urban. Basically what happens for the rest of the story is lots of people become converted to religion and then get themselves murdered. In that order.
The two brothers became preachers, and got quite well known. They also got beheaded. Maximus, one of the officers responsible, felt so bad about this he also turned religious, and went around converting people in their place. When Almachius, who was the guy in charge, found out about this he ordered Maximus to be killed as well. Which he was, but I forget how.
Almachius decides the best thing to do would be to banish Cecelia to some far-flung corner of the earth, employing that principle of justice favoured by five year olds everywhere: "well, she started it". But by now the court officers have all turned to religion too and they refuse to take her away. Finally he manages to convince them to at least set up a meeting with Cecelia, during which he demands she renounce her faith. She won't, of course, and says all sorts of things to goad him about how stupid and powerless he is. To be fair, she has a point.
He condems her to death, and tells his men he wants her to be "cleansed by fire." He must have found some new men from somewhere, because these ones are prepared to follow his instructions to the letter (heathens!): they put her in a bath and try to set fire to her. She won't burn, so they try and cut her head off, but that doesn't work either.
There's some sort of convenient plot point (sorry, I mean long-standing rule of the kingdom) which says that it's illegal to try and chop someone's head off more than three times, so the soldiers leave Cecelia with her neck all mangled, and blood spurting everywhere. Eventually after three days she dies, but not before she converts lots more people and asks for her house to be turned into a church.
Thursday, 26 August 2010
Reasons to be cheerful
Time for a little light relief round these parts, I think.
1. From the comments at another blog:
This game sounds BRILLIANT. I can't begin to imagine what it involves or how on earth this daughter's woman ever came up with it, but I would dearly love to know. And, I have so many questions. What kind of restaurant? Are the vampires the customers, or is the pony? Who pays the bill? Is there a vegetarian option?
2. I doubt there is anyone in entire universe who hasn't heard the cat-in-the-wheelie-bin story a million times by now, but here's an alternative version of the story you may not have seen. It's very silly, but it made me smile.
3. "Sorry, I must have got my Walters crossed" is my new favourite expression. This is why. Good old Letters of Note. (Speaking of LoN this is incredibly sweet too. I can't remember if I've posted it before)
4. Some time soon I am going to learn how to knit this squid:
1. From the comments at another blog:
I'm sorry to ignore the four challenges you've thrown down but I just wanted to add my own favourite phrase to those you mentioned. It comes from my daughter; it is the name of a game she used to play with her best friend, and it's called Restaurant, Vampire & Pony.
2. I doubt there is anyone in entire universe who hasn't heard the cat-in-the-wheelie-bin story a million times by now, but here's an alternative version of the story you may not have seen. It's very silly, but it made me smile.
3. "Sorry, I must have got my Walters crossed" is my new favourite expression. This is why. Good old Letters of Note. (Speaking of LoN this is incredibly sweet too. I can't remember if I've posted it before)
4. Some time soon I am going to learn how to knit this squid:
Wednesday, 25 August 2010
....and why it was such good timing.
Hello again. This was originally part of the previous post, but then I realised it is a bit self-indulgent (sorry) and worthy of its own little home, which you are very welcome to drive straight past if you prefer.
On the same day that the winners were announced I received an email which, to cut a long story short, meant losing a big chunk of work I had lined up for September. The income from this work has pretty much been the bedrock of my financial plans for this half of the year. (I say plans, but I don't really have any. What I really mean is that knowing this money was on the way was making me feel a lot more relaxed about having no income in August, or beyond November.)
It rocked me to the core, and not just because of the financial implications, although those are pretty dire. The biggest problem was having to accept the fact that IT WAS ENTIRELY MY OWN FAULT. I had been procrastinating, for no particular reason, about filling in a form. If I'd done it when I was supposed to and before I had forgotten, there wouldn't have been a problem. But I didn't, and there was, and as a result I lost the work.
This scared me. It also forced me to confront something which I have known for a while now; the things I am worst at are the things which you ned to be good at when you are self-employed. Pitching for work, controlling finances, demanding payments, negotiating rates, planning ahead; none of these are things which come naturally to me. I'm not good at them, and because I don't like not being good at things, I try to avoid doing them. It's not a great strategy, I know that. But there's another key skill for succesful self-employment, which I'm not great at either: self-discipline. The cold facts are that if I remain a contractor the time will come when I simply can't afford not to be good at these things any more. A little sooner than expected, now.
I constantly question whether freelancing is the right option for me; I left a perfectly good job, which I could do perfectly well, to try something different which I'm not doing very well at all at the moment. Was it the right decision? While all of my instincts scream yes, the practical side of me is suggesting (quite loudly) that I should just stick to what I'm good at and find a real job. I want to trust my instincts, but they really worry me sometimes.
How is any of this relevant? Well, these were some of the thoughts bouncing around my head on Friday afternoon, causing all manner of confusion and chaos. Then I saw my name among the list of competition winners on Rowan's website, screamed several times and promptly burst into tears. There are few things which would match the rush of delight and disbelief I felt at that moment, but (and this is something I didn't realise at the time) the overwhelming emotion was actually something else. An enormous sense of relief.
Writing is another thing I'm new at, and another thing I'm not sure if I can do. Knowing that someone else liked my story enough to rate it among her top eight, among a field of over 300, made me think maybe, just maybe, it is something I could get good at after all. I'm under no illusions; this was just one story, and just one competition. But somewhere, mixed in with the questions and worries and insecurities that have been jangling around in my brain, there's now also a tiny scrap of faith. It's the only thing keeping me brave enough to keep trusting those crazy instincts of mine at the moment.
(I'm pretty sure I'm not meant to be feeling this confused about life in general. According to every magazine article I've ever read on the topic of getting older, being confident about who you are and what you are good at and what you want from life is meant to be the best thing about your thirties. It's some sort of trade off for the wrinkles, harder-to-shift extra kilos and general sense of impending physical doom, apparently.)
Anyway, enough of this. I have stuff to do. Work to find, invoices to chase, a diary to fill. Plus, as an author I was chatting with recently (yes, this is how I roll now) jokingly said during our conversation "the problem with being a writer is that as soon as you finish one story, people expect you to produce another one". Easy for her to joke about; she had just signed a three book publishing deal. But still, I know how she feels.
On the same day that the winners were announced I received an email which, to cut a long story short, meant losing a big chunk of work I had lined up for September. The income from this work has pretty much been the bedrock of my financial plans for this half of the year. (I say plans, but I don't really have any. What I really mean is that knowing this money was on the way was making me feel a lot more relaxed about having no income in August, or beyond November.)
It rocked me to the core, and not just because of the financial implications, although those are pretty dire. The biggest problem was having to accept the fact that IT WAS ENTIRELY MY OWN FAULT. I had been procrastinating, for no particular reason, about filling in a form. If I'd done it when I was supposed to and before I had forgotten, there wouldn't have been a problem. But I didn't, and there was, and as a result I lost the work.
This scared me. It also forced me to confront something which I have known for a while now; the things I am worst at are the things which you ned to be good at when you are self-employed. Pitching for work, controlling finances, demanding payments, negotiating rates, planning ahead; none of these are things which come naturally to me. I'm not good at them, and because I don't like not being good at things, I try to avoid doing them. It's not a great strategy, I know that. But there's another key skill for succesful self-employment, which I'm not great at either: self-discipline. The cold facts are that if I remain a contractor the time will come when I simply can't afford not to be good at these things any more. A little sooner than expected, now.
I constantly question whether freelancing is the right option for me; I left a perfectly good job, which I could do perfectly well, to try something different which I'm not doing very well at all at the moment. Was it the right decision? While all of my instincts scream yes, the practical side of me is suggesting (quite loudly) that I should just stick to what I'm good at and find a real job. I want to trust my instincts, but they really worry me sometimes.
How is any of this relevant? Well, these were some of the thoughts bouncing around my head on Friday afternoon, causing all manner of confusion and chaos. Then I saw my name among the list of competition winners on Rowan's website, screamed several times and promptly burst into tears. There are few things which would match the rush of delight and disbelief I felt at that moment, but (and this is something I didn't realise at the time) the overwhelming emotion was actually something else. An enormous sense of relief.
Writing is another thing I'm new at, and another thing I'm not sure if I can do. Knowing that someone else liked my story enough to rate it among her top eight, among a field of over 300, made me think maybe, just maybe, it is something I could get good at after all. I'm under no illusions; this was just one story, and just one competition. But somewhere, mixed in with the questions and worries and insecurities that have been jangling around in my brain, there's now also a tiny scrap of faith. It's the only thing keeping me brave enough to keep trusting those crazy instincts of mine at the moment.
(I'm pretty sure I'm not meant to be feeling this confused about life in general. According to every magazine article I've ever read on the topic of getting older, being confident about who you are and what you are good at and what you want from life is meant to be the best thing about your thirties. It's some sort of trade off for the wrinkles, harder-to-shift extra kilos and general sense of impending physical doom, apparently.)
Anyway, enough of this. I have stuff to do. Work to find, invoices to chase, a diary to fill. Plus, as an author I was chatting with recently (yes, this is how I roll now) jokingly said during our conversation "the problem with being a writer is that as soon as you finish one story, people expect you to produce another one". Easy for her to joke about; she had just signed a three book publishing deal. But still, I know how she feels.
That writing competition I mentioned.......
Hello. If you would like to read my prize-winning short story (a phrase I will never tire of), you can do so here. Also, coming soon to this very blog, will be the director's cut. (You probably think I'm joking about this, but I'm not. Watch this space.)
The competition was set up by author Rowan Coleman, who launched it to coincide with the publication of her latest book, The Happy Home for Broken Hearts. Rowan's writing career started when she won a short story competition run by Company magazine. The prize included all sorts of amazing sounding things like lunch at the Ivy (Lulu was at the next table), a meeting with an agent, and lots of free books. From what I have heard about publishing there was probably also some cake. But as Rowan explains on her website:
There is no way of saying this without sound incredibly cheesy, but it makes me really happy to know that there are people in the world who care enough to do things like this. And I would still say that even if a signed copy of Rowan's latest book wasn't winging its way to me by way of a prize. Hand on heart.
I had to cut the story down quite a bit to make the word limit, and I think I still prefer the slightly longer version, which I will post here in the next day or two. If you read either version, I really hope you like it.
The competition was set up by author Rowan Coleman, who launched it to coincide with the publication of her latest book, The Happy Home for Broken Hearts. Rowan's writing career started when she won a short story competition run by Company magazine. The prize included all sorts of amazing sounding things like lunch at the Ivy (Lulu was at the next table), a meeting with an agent, and lots of free books. From what I have heard about publishing there was probably also some cake. But as Rowan explains on her website:
....what winning that competition really did for me was to give me confidence to try. I've met a lot of aspiring writers in the last nine years who have asked me what my top tip for getting published is and I always say write, because if you don't write you've got no chance. But apart from that, an essential component you need is the confidence to try .She goes on to explain that this is why she launched her own competition; in order to give the same opportunities she had to another aspiring writer.
There is no way of saying this without sound incredibly cheesy, but it makes me really happy to know that there are people in the world who care enough to do things like this. And I would still say that even if a signed copy of Rowan's latest book wasn't winging its way to me by way of a prize. Hand on heart.
I had to cut the story down quite a bit to make the word limit, and I think I still prefer the slightly longer version, which I will post here in the next day or two. If you read either version, I really hope you like it.
Saturday, 21 August 2010
Sunday Night Music Club on A Saturday Morning - the sequel
I'm off to the Edinburgh festival (watching, not performing) for a few days so won't be here on Sunday night.
I was trying to decide whether to go for something Scottish or, like the last time I did this on a Saturday morning, use it as an excuse to delve into the world of kids' TV. Then I remembered this cover. Problem solved.
As an added bonus, it's got a good helping of festival surrealness thrown in as well - something I'm hoping for a lot of over the next few days.
Back Tuesday.
I was trying to decide whether to go for something Scottish or, like the last time I did this on a Saturday morning, use it as an excuse to delve into the world of kids' TV. Then I remembered this cover. Problem solved.
As an added bonus, it's got a good helping of festival surrealness thrown in as well - something I'm hoping for a lot of over the next few days.
Back Tuesday.
Friday, 20 August 2010
In which I share some exciting (for me) and excellent (for me) news
I know I promised I wouldn't do this again, but I'm afraid it's all going to be about me for the next little while. Me me me me me me me. Feel free to skip this post if you like. There will be boasting.
I have won a writing competition. By "won" I mean "been chosen as one of five runners-up in" but trust me; that's more than good enough for me. I am so beyond excited that I can't even see excited any more. It's somewhere over there near thrilled, grateful and belief. I'm beyond all of those, too.
I have a lot more to say about this, and how it came about, and why I'm so pleased. And it's not ALL going to be about me, I promise. This wasn't just an ordinary competition; the reason behind it is, I think, something quite special and deserves an explanation.
I'm going to leave all of that until later though. Mainly because I am still ridiculously excited and need to calm down before this post self-combusts in a cloud of exclamation marks and shouty capital letters (you should have seen earlier drafts).
The timing couldn't have been better. I've had a funny old week, for lots of reasons; some bad things have happened, some nice things have happened, and some things have happened which I'm still not quite sure how I feel about. It's certainly been a week where I've spent more time than usual questioning the decisions I've made and and how wise (or not) they were. The answers to some of those questions haven't been very pretty.
I guess I've been having a bit of a confidence crisis, for want of a better term. Seeing my name on the competition website this afternoon was the very last thing I expected. But also, exactly what I needed. Some day, soon, I'll explain why. You can skip that post too, if you like. I really won't mind.
I have won a writing competition. By "won" I mean "been chosen as one of five runners-up in" but trust me; that's more than good enough for me. I am so beyond excited that I can't even see excited any more. It's somewhere over there near thrilled, grateful and belief. I'm beyond all of those, too.
I have a lot more to say about this, and how it came about, and why I'm so pleased. And it's not ALL going to be about me, I promise. This wasn't just an ordinary competition; the reason behind it is, I think, something quite special and deserves an explanation.
I'm going to leave all of that until later though. Mainly because I am still ridiculously excited and need to calm down before this post self-combusts in a cloud of exclamation marks and shouty capital letters (you should have seen earlier drafts).
The timing couldn't have been better. I've had a funny old week, for lots of reasons; some bad things have happened, some nice things have happened, and some things have happened which I'm still not quite sure how I feel about. It's certainly been a week where I've spent more time than usual questioning the decisions I've made and and how wise (or not) they were. The answers to some of those questions haven't been very pretty.
I guess I've been having a bit of a confidence crisis, for want of a better term. Seeing my name on the competition website this afternoon was the very last thing I expected. But also, exactly what I needed. Some day, soon, I'll explain why. You can skip that post too, if you like. I really won't mind.
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