Why this came to mind I don’t know – could be the election – could be that we are all about to die in fire when global warming kills us all!
This will be the last post of the year and I feel I need to get my thoughts together as I do every year. The problem is that my thoughts are always a bit of jumble.
“Your thoughts…. Plural?”
Chandler Bing (Friends: The One with Phoebe’s Rats)
I feel trapped in the act of balancing all the facets of life. I am not sure how to leave the trap – not unless you know how to make the day about three hours longer…
I saw a video the other day that talked about the importance of sleep.
…okay only saw a clip before this starts out in a weird place.
I do not get enough sleep. Some nights it is as little as four hours. I didn’t realise quite how bad it was until seeing this video – is it wrong that that is my new year’s resolution? Because after watching this I think what I want from next year is 2928 hours of sleep! That sounds like a significant investment of time.
Speaking of time – I also need to go to the gym. That is another battle too – oddly these are the same battles as I mentioned last year! It is good to know nothing is ever learned! I have been to the gym sporadically over the past year and really haven’t got my money’s worth. I would say I need a plan but plans haven’t been working out so well for me – maybe it wasn’t cunning enough.
I just wanted to say that I have checked this post. I really have. Unfortunately my particular combination of dyslexia and dyspraxia makes it really hard for me to spot typos. Please enjoy and I’ll try not to make too many errors.
Good song but I don’t think he has thought this through!
This will be the last blog post before Christmas. So I wanted to wish you all a very happy Christmas, or Hanukkah, or whatever it may be that you may be celebrating this winter.
In my family we always call this festival Christmas, even if we are not celebrating it as a religious event, to us it is about our own traditions. Usually this involves me cooking dinner, watching Snow Business (my parents love it) and A Christmas Carol on Christmas Eve – and on the day itself we have turkey with all the trimmings.
I like this one too.
I hope you have a wonderful time next week. I am lucky to have some time off and I am going to do my best to relax. I belive I will leave the last word to Slade.
or…
Yeah that is more me…or
Perhaps this!
Have a wonderful time!
I just wanted to say that I have checked this post. I really have. Unfortunately my particular combination of dyslexia and dyspraxia makes it really hard for me to spot typos. Please enjoy and I’ll try not to make too many errors.
I was thinking I would put something witty for the title of today’s post but I find I have nothing. The general election came out as a Conservative majority and I must say I am greatly dismayed by the result.
As I made clear in my last post I am left leaning and I voted for Labour. I still believe that Labour were the best choice for this election but, obviously, this was not held by the majority of the electorate. I am worried for the future.
Not my future. I am relatively lucky. My job is secure even if I complain about it a lot but for many in this country this victory means that they will not have the support they need.
This election has been rife with propaganda and outright lies. It is very difficult to know what is true and what is not. Will the NHS survive? Only time will tell. We cannot let it die.
Brexit is going ahead and I can only hope we get a good deal. I hope that those from other countries can remain in this country. What seems to be missing from modern discourse is how valuable each person is.
Britain has people from all over the world. And that diversity is invaluable it would be such a shame if people stopped feeling welcome here.
The left may have lost this election but we can still continue to give voice to our opinions and do what we can to make this country a wonderful place to live. I am Welsh but Wales is home to so many people from all over this planet. I see people from everywhere when walking in town. I don’t want to see in a few years that that diversity is disappearing. It would be very sad if it did. If we must go ahead with Brexit, which I still feel is ill advised, let us at least not let it allow us to hate those who are different.
I just wanted to say that I have checked this post. I really have. Unfortunately my particular combination of dyslexia and dyspraxia makes it really hard for me to spot typos. Please enjoy and I’ll try not to make too many errors.
A week from the time I am writing this the last votes of the general election will be being cast. Yes it is that time again in the UK. We had an election in 2017 and 2015 and now again. Since the Brexit vote the UK has been in turmoil and it has felt like nothing else has been discussed in parliament but Brexit.
I always vote in elections even though, sometimes, it feels like a pointless endeavour. The first-past-the-post voting system is deeply flawed. A party could, in theory, get the most votes but few seats if their support was too spread out. This is because what counts is the votes in each constituency. CGP Grey has done a series of videos on voting which is well worth a watch:
Check out the rest of the play list it is pure gold.
For the time being, and for the foreseeable future, we are stuck with this system and have to work with it. I think the spoiler effect is especially problematic – and it is why we are in the mess we are in – if you follow the news in the UK you will know what I mean.
I am rethinking as I write this but I think I am just going to say it. The Conservative party was worried UKIP would take their votes – so they humoured them by having the referendum. The plan seems to have been that the referendum would result in remain winning and UKIP would disappear. However leave won and nobody was expecting that or knew how to proceed.
There are other issues besides Brexit but Brexit is certainly going to be a focus of many people’s votes. It for that reason, although not that reason alone, that I am voting Labour this time around.
It is my opinion that Labour’s plan is the most fair. The Liberal Democrats, while I agree with their position, are ignoring the referendum. The Conservatives are following the referendum but are ignoring the fact that the question was too simplistic. There are as many ways to leave the EU as there are to have a fun weekend. Imagine if that was the question: Would you like to have fun this weekend?
We would all say yes to that but what are we going to do?
Watch football
Get drunk.
Go to the club.
Sit quietly at home, listen to The Corrs, while sipping tea.
Read a book.
Play a board game.
Watch all of The Lord of the Rings films back to back.
Run a marathon.
Make a quilt.
Sit in the park.
Go trainspotting.
Write your novel.
Stay in bed and just sleep.
Cook a fancy meal.
Enter an eating contest.
Go to the gym.
Visit mum and dad.
Watch Cricket.
Go to the science fiction convention.
Go for a hike.
All those things could be fun. However if I said ‘Yes’ to fun and ended up at the gym I would be very disappointed. (The fact that I put on weight last month and need to go to the gym is irrelevant at this point.)
Or to put it another way. Would you like a £1000? Yes. That’ll be one foot please. Wait what? Your foot for the £1000. On second thoughts… You said ‘Yes’ now hold still.
Now you could decide that you would rather have £1000 than your foot but when the money was offered that wasn’t known so the question needs to be asked again. It is not ignoring democracy it is following through and giving people an informed choice. In my view it is the same as getting work done on your home. When you ask for a quote you have a figure in mind and if it is a lot more than that you wouldn’t go ahead with the work.
There are many questions that turn from a ‘Yes’ to a ‘No’ when more facts are known. I honestly can’t understand the Brexit at all costs mentality. Yet that is what many people seem to want.
I did have more to say but this post is getting really long. My philosophy this election is anyone but the Tories. That said I like what Labour are offering, and this time around might have voted for them anyway. And I hope if they do get in they help the homeless and poor families who need it so desperately.
I hope the election goes well and I suspect that with whoever wins we still have some time before this Brexit stuff is truly behind us.
I just wanted to say that I have checked this post. I really have. Unfortunately my particular combination of dyslexia and dyspraxia makes it really hard for me to spot typos. Please enjoy and I’ll try not to make too many errors.
Yesterday National Novel Writing Month 2019 came to an end and I completed the 50,000 words. It was a bit of an uphill battle at times but I did it and I am pleased with having done it. It didn’t quite go according to plan and I want to tell you about it. And I am doing this at the last minute – I have 39 minutes. (Yeah that really didn’t work out did it?)
One: My planned protagonist was not my protagonist.
I started off with a plan for a main character and her story. That character ended up hardly being in the story and she might not even be in the final draft.
Two: My actual protagonist turned out to be gay – but he is still closeted.
Sometimes your characters speak to you – it is weird when it happens because you don’t know where it comes from. My actual protagonist is Ian Foyle a lieutenant in the Royal Navy. Specifically an observer on a helicopter.
I just picked the name at random. I only needed to know about him in relation to his job. Now the story has a love interest. Some people swear by detailed character descriptions I prefer to just find out as I write. (To let the characters speak to me.) I will have to get a sensitivity reader when the time comes. The last thing I want to do is offend any one.
Three: My secondary main character lost his wife.
The other main character is Lieutenant Commander Andrew Hildebrand. (Tip for next year give character’s long names it helps boost the word count) – I was writing a scene between him and an elf. He was attracted to her and I kept thinking this was bad because it felt like he should have been married. I put in late wife and suddenly it clicked. His wife was gone and he was feeling guilty about feeling attracted to someone else.
Four: One of the fauns may be transgender.
So fauns are important to the story. I won’t say villain more like an antagonist – I didn’t want a villain as such.
My idea of the fauns was that they are matriarchal thus it is the males that have what we would consider a ‘female’ role. As such a faun ship’s captain should have been female – but I kept writing ‘he’.
So could this character be transgender? And if so how does that work in a world of magic?
…or
Is the faun a male pretending to be female to overcome prejedice in his society?
…or
Am I just a bad writer who can’t remember his own race backstory?
All in all it was a good month of writing. And now I can panic about Christmas. See you next week.
I just wanted to say that I have checked this post. I really have. Unfortunately my particular combination of dyslexia and dyspraxia makes it really hard for me to spot typos. Please enjoy and I’ll try not to make too many errors.
Unstable Orbit 