Catmachine

I've been posting a lot of short fiction onto my blog recently. This is partly to give it a wider audience, but mostly to "use it up" so I am forced to write more. I have a number of ideas for new short stories but as ever find it difficult to get started. Perhaps this will give me the incentive to do so. In the meantime work on the novel continues apace despite the official end of the writing course. I am if anything more enthusiastic about finishing it now, not least because I'm very keen to find out what happens in the end. I do already have a vague shape for the overall plot, but am one of those writers who discovers the story as they're going along rather than planning it all with military precision and post-it notes. I'm currently working on filling in the gaps so I at least have a coherent completed first half. I'll then have to resist going back and changing everything and just strike out for the end. After that I can go back and change things, al...

The Genie said, “I have news for thee, O fisherman! I am about to slay thee without mercy!” “O powerful Genie,” said the fisherman, “Why wilt thou kill me and what calls for my death? Did I not deliver thee from the depths of the sea, bring thee to land and release thee from thy bottle?” The Story of the Fisherman, The Book Of The Thousand And One Nights I was the sole surviving member of the E’freet, the last to be imprisoned. We had been fighting the Soleyman’s forces for millennia, our numbers steadily decreasing as one by one we had been captured. And now it was just me. I felt a chill go through me as I was brought before him. How many times previously had this scene been played out? All the Soleyman wanted was for us to submit to his will, accept his “faith”. And some might have suggested we give in. But that was not acceptable. Imagine the destruction that could have been wrought had our powers come under his control and put to the service of his expansionist plans and the moral...

(i) Seagulls. It was beginning to seem as if their population was increasing exponentially. This was the third time in under a week that I'd been awakened in the wee small hours by their strange, harsh noises. And believe me these some of these noises were very strange indeed. Despite the fact that the night was still dark, they started up every day at 4am, regular as clockwork, and began to... to... To be honest I couldn't say exactly what they were doing. Lying there in the darkness, my mind phasing in and out of a light-headed semiconscious state, I resigned myself to having to endure yet another of what in recent days had often started to sound like performances of some kind. This morning it started like an argument - two gulls exchanging guttural insults. However at one point one of them obviously scored a point of some sort as its pronouncement was greeted by a chorus of raucous shrieks and calls from what sounded like a considerable audience... Just what was this? A play...

This short story is now available in audiobook form as the first episode of the Unlimited Story Podcast . Get the <a href="http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/usp-the-unlimited-story-podcast">USP: The Unlimited Story Podcast</a> widget and many other <a href="http://www.widgetbox.com/">great free widgets</a> at <a href="http://www.widgetbox.com">Widgetbox</a>! Not seeing a widget? (<a href="http://support.widgetbox.com/">More info</a>)

Like Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything and Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time , the Church's The Bible attempts to answer the eternal questions of where we came from, where we're going and what we can expect to find when we get there. However, unlike Bryson and Hawking, the Church has made absolutely no effort to make their epic tome readable or even remotely plausible. Nevertheless, despite the impenetrable prose and frankly unlikely plot, The Bible is an international best seller, perhaps for some of the same reasons as Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code . Both use iconic religious imagery, and both use the modern penchant for conspiracy theory to add a little zest to the proceedings (although Dan Brown does it better) - one of the central themes of The Bible is that God created Heaven and Earth and then attempted to cover it up. An aspect of The Bible that lets the reader down is the wildly uneven style. The blood and thunder of the first...

I know a thin young policeman, he's always on our street A thin young, sallow pale-faced man, his clothes all black and neat He's too sad to be a policeman, he's never known to smile When everybody sees him they run a blessed mile *Sobbing* He weeps upon his duty, he cries upon his beat He scowls at everybody when he's walking in the street Is he mad or in a coma? Or is he back in time? Or is he trying to get back home by solving all the crime? *Sobbing*

I'm far more surprised and alarmed now that it is 18 months since my last blog post - obviously I haven't been putting any of the time bending tips into effect yet. In fact I haven't even finished reading Making Time yet - not sure why but I am putting off reading the last chapter. I think I'm afraid that it won't offer any great secrets for beating time at its own game which means that I'll be swept inexorably on to the point when I wake up on the last day of life. Since the last post I have been on a Creative Writing Certificate course. I am still on it, but there's only one term left once this one's over. At the end of all this I am hoping to have a publishable novel. Last term's course was "Special Author" and the assessed coursework in December was a "Creative Intervention". It sounds odd - like storming into a novel, moving all the furniture around and dragging the characters out to the pub against their will. What it boile...

Is anyone else surprised (and perhaps a little bit alarmed) by the fact that it's September already? This year has been going by exceptionally fast - by rights it should perhaps be mid-May, no later. Anyone who knows me will know how I do tend to bang on about this - time accelerating as you get old - quite a bit. However, I haven't blogged about it yet so it will be interesting to put my ramblings in some kind of order. It's a common enough observation - those long hot childhood summers that seemed to last for about five years in today's temporal currency... a two and a half hour car journey being an eternity of boredom at the age of eight... and the past decade passing like a flash. But why does it happen? I've heard a number of theories advanced. Time is measured as a proportion of your life so far This sounds plausible. Let's take a week. When you're five years old, a week is 0.38 per cent of your life. When you're thirty five a week is only 0.05 per...

It's been over two months since my last post. I have no excuse really other than that I've been busy what with one thing and another. Plus I've never been that keen on documenting the minutiae of my life, nor the personal stuff. This is why this thing only gets updated when I'm actually doing something interesting or when I've got something to complain about. In the year or so since I've been posting here there have been a fair few rants. I thought I'd get myself back into the swing of the blog by following up on some of them - seeing if there have been any developments as it were. Inspectors, pointlessness of (5 May 2006) This has now become a little outdated as there's no longer a flat fare. That said I haven't seen any inspectors for a while, either. Cyclepathic tendencies (17 May 2006) Where do I begin? I've continued to cycle to work on a regular basis, so have a million things to add to my list of gripes. Here are just some of them. A cycle...

There remains very little still to tell which is probably why I waited until I was sitting jetlagged back at work in the UK before writing it up. I didn’t have much difficulty getting up at 5.30am – in fact I’d lain awake for a little time before that in anticipation of the alarm on my phone and in the event turned the damned thing off before it sounded. Downstairs to checkout, I asked the guy behind the desk where the best place to get a cab would be at this time in the morning. “ Eighth Avenue ,” he said pointing up the street, “You don’t get one in thirty seconds there, you ain’t got no arms!” He wasn’t wrong – I got a cab about ten seconds after arriving at the corner of 20 th and 8 th . So there then followed the journey back through and away from the city that - as it can be on many holidays - was somewhat melancholy. I got to JFK in plenty of time; check-in and the security checks so very fast and efficient that I obviously hadn’t needed to get there two hours in advance (unli...

Three days is too short for this trip really. I haven’t really gone out a huge amount or done anything specific. Just been soaking up the atmosphere. Which is enjoyable in itself. Last night just sat out in the courtyard and chatted to the other patrons, before going off to bed when they shut it down. This morning I caught the subway uptown to meet Cathy’s other cousin Olivia, her husband James, their two kids and Susan again. We ate breakfast and then went out into Central Park. Weather grey and sticky although the centre of the park seemed to be in scorching sunlight. Headed down to Times Square which isn’t a square really. It has that strangely scary thing of big tall buildings behind which are even bigger, even taller buildings. It gives you vertigo even when you’re standing at ground level. Like seeing something behind the sun. Went to the cinema, then headed back downtown and got the Staten Island Ferry in both directions for the views. Then subway back to the hostel where I now ...

After another breakfast which was in no way, shape or form in line with my dietary regime back in the UK, I set off for another day’s wandering about. I hadn’t gone out the previous night, but I figure I’m on holiday. I don’t have to do anything. In some ways this trip is just reconnaissance. I’m sure I’ll be back. Being Sunday morning the streets were deserted, which was interesting. I headed across to the Flatiron Building and then down Fifth Avenue to Washington Square . Then it was east, north and east again for a while until I found myself in East Village in general and St Mark’s Place in particular. What was interesting about this walk was that even though the geography of the streets is fairly scientific, the character of these areas varies wildly. These changes continued as my route into Lower East Side , Greenwich Village , SoHo and finally the edges of The Meatpacking District (I kid you not). Here I visited Cathy’s cousin Susan who lives on the top floor of a small block...

The annoying thing - one of the annoying things for there are several – about travelling alone is that you don’t get to appear in any of your pictures, and as a result, they look like just anyone’s pictures, with nothing unique about them save your perspective. Anyway, spent most of yesterday evening in the hostel’s courtyard talking to some of the other occupants. Quite a few Brits, some Europeans and some Koreans. Was too tired to do anything about going out last night and got a relatively early night. This meant a relatively early morning. Had breakfast at a nearby café and then walked uptown towards the Empire State Building. Luckily it was still early enough for ridiculous queues not to be an issue – and in fact within half an hour of arrival I was at the top. There was a strange quiet calm up there as if people were afraid to raise their voices in case the laws of nature suddenly noticed what they were doing so far from the ground. Rather hazy, sadly. Back down and after a visit...

Some considerable time later although strangely around two and seven hours at the same time. I can’t access the wireless here so will have to upload later. Driving from airports into city centres seems to be the same the world over. Aside from the driving-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-road and Duel type lorries, the route the airport bus took from JFK to Manhattan was more than a little similar to the A40/M40 and A4/M4 routes into London. Until skyscrapers loomed on the horizon and the bus dived into the Queens Midtown tunnel and emerged into Manhattan itself. Somewhere hauntingly familiar from TV and yet – despite having visited it as a child – somewhere that on some level I’d always had doubts about being real. I’ve been dreaming about visiting here for ten years or more and spookily there were one or two street corners and buildings that I remembered from those dreams. Back in the real world the traffic was heavy. Just like London really! It took ages and a change of bus to get to Penn ...

Halfway across the Atlantic and that roar is beginning to get to me for some reason. It’s somehow more than just the noise of the engines, it’s a symptom of sudden change, I’m passing though a transition between states, not just from one country to another but from regular life to holiday life. Even if this is only going to be a short one. Of course this doesn’t just happen with planes. I experience a similar phase shift if I catch a train up to London after work – the change from work being to play being. But on planes it lasts much longer and that’s why it’s more noticeable. Miles up in a metal tube. The person in front of me is one of those – you know the type, they recline their seat back as far as it will go and then some at the first opportunity. I wonder how he’d react if I suddenly whacked him on the top of the head? Best not to I think. Newfoundland has appeared on the left hand side of the animated flight path just as Ireland’s disappeared off the right. ETA 3 hours 28 minute...

A lot of people complain about customer service. The general consensus is that it's gone to the dogs. As I've pointed out before, more often than not these days consumers are treated as suspects rather than customers. A terrible state of affairs of course, but what's even more terrible is when customer service goes the other way and becomes over attentive and solicitous. It's not just me - I've spoken to friends about this and they all feel the same. It's at its worst when you get into a routine - for example if you call at a particular shop/cafe/stall for your lunchtime roll. After a surprisingly short amount of time the owner recognises you and then starts anticipating you. That's what I hate, being anticipated, with all the underlying implications that I'm being dull and predictable. Unfortunately when they say "Ah, cheese salad roll again today sir?" I haven't yet plucked up the courage to say "No, I thought today I'd go for a...

It has been suggested by some people that occasionally my blog entries here are perhaps a little too angry. And therefore might come across as rude. Sorry! That was never the intention – firstly they're always a bit tongue in cheek. And secondly – this is the internet. Next to what often seems to pass for normal internet behaviour, my blogs are a model of restraint! You'd think that online where people are communicating anonymously with people they don't know in forums, chat rooms, email groups, Second Life etc etc etc… people would be on their best behaviour. After all, in real life you don't walk into a room full of people you don't know and start insulting them. However, in reality the anonymity offered by the online world seems to make many people lose all their inhibitions and fly off the handle at the drop of a hat over the tiniest things. For an example of this in action just go and have a look at any number of forums dedicated to popular TV shows. They'r...

Sorry I haven't written anything for a while; its been a busy time. Anyway, before I come back with a fresh entry here is a list of people who should be shot. Apologies for the swearing. It was worse on the original version of this I posted elsewhere. People who talk about " a month's deposit " in reference to the deposit they pay on rented accommodation. The deposit is paid against any damage to the material of the flat. It has nothing to do with time! Most of the time it is around the same amount as a month's rent, true. But that's all. Shopkeepers who don't offer you a plastic bag until asked and then with extremely bad grace give you a wisp of translucent plastic that evaporates within fifteen seconds spilling your shopping over the pavement. Skinflints (yes, I am fully aware that we should all reuse plastic bags in the interests of being green). People who, whilst doing their shopping in the supermarket, start eating the food before having passed thr...

I realise that I'm just being annoyed at nothing again, but this particular nothing has been bothering me for years, ever since I first started working in an office environment way back in 1989. I usually spot instances of it whilst on my way somewhere - toilet, canteen, refectory, library - it doesn't really matter. The important thing is that I'm in transit. And I will spot them - two people who until relatively recently were obviously also in transit - sometimes one of them might be halfway through a door, another might be carrying a cup of coffee. But their transit has been interrupted by the fact that they've found something to talk about. Now of course there's nothing wrong with this so far. Seeing someone whilst on your way somewhere might remind you of something you had to say to them; instead of putting it off and possibly forgetting, it makes sense to pause in your travels and get it off your chest. The annoying thing starts when I'm on my way back fro...

Spam email seems to be getting worse on an almost daily basis. I do wonder sometimes why they bother - the techniques they use are so basic and flawed that surely only those with a complete brain-bypass would ever be taken in? That's the problem though -it costs nothing to send spam so it's worth sending out even if only one in a hundred thousand are suckered - that's 25 sales if you send out 2.5 million emails (a not uncommon figure). The only way to stop this as far as I can see would be charging for mass emails - I'm not sure how that would work exactly, but it would certainly cause some spammers pause for thought - their number one reason for doing it would have been taken away. What I don't get though is the lengths they go to get around people's spam filters by mis-spelling the keywords or using similar tricks. Surely if you set up a spam filter to discard all emails which mention Viagra it's because you are not interested in purchasing Viagra? So if a...