One (strange) Direction

Thursday 15th August. 23:32

We've had a much quieter day today. We did in the end go for a short cycle ride in the evening, for about half an hour - just to find a post box really.

I do find it easier to go out, to get outside and enjoy the fresh air when I'm on holiday. I can no longer claim that this is because there are less distractions or reasons I can use to side track me into staying indoors. I've brought them all with me. Well, with the exception of the cleaning or doing my laundry I guess. I've brought my ipad, Chromebook, Blackberry and Kindle with me.

That's right folks, one mobile internet connection wasn't enough, so I brought another along, just to be on the safe side.

I uploaded some more photos today, from our marathon bike ride, and some new ones taken today from Rye Harbour, which we stopped off at on our little cycle out today.

We did find a post box. We did post the obligatory post cards. There's only one person that will receive one that hasn't been kept up to date with what we're doing by other means already. All the others will have had the chance to see the pictures, or seen the facebook updates.

Do we ever really get away ? Well, not if you take all your technology crap with you, no.

Chloe and I watched some TV this evening, after tucking in to a ready meal lasagne (Chloe's first Lasagne, and she deemed it 'lush' - so that's a success then. Something we will have to try and make when we get home). We watched a program on Channel 4 about the fans (or stalkers) of One Direction. They're this boy band that were formed out of one of the reality TV shows where people vote for which most popular, tuneless wannabe stars they'd like to thrust into the not entirely unforgiving glare of the worlds media and public eye.

The program focussed on the exploits of what have to be said are very determined and single minded fans. It has to be said that these fans all seem to be girls between the ages of 13 and 19. Fans with too much time and money to waste it would appear on chasing this poor group of boys around the country in the hope that they will meet, talk to, fall in love with and then marry (and live happily every after) one of the 'band'.

One man's determined and single minded is another man's stalker.

I can't understand where the parents of these girls are, why are they allowing or encouraging such utter mania. It's one thing to be a fan, and consumed by wanting to know about whatever your star is doing, when they are next releasing a single or whatever, but this ?

They seem to organise themselves on Twitter. Another thing for Twitter to be blamed for. My god there's a whole stadium full of crying, screaming teenage girls ready to be taken advantage of by some unscrupulous pop band manager, or anyone else for that matter. I find it quite scary that there seems to be no one in their lives imploring or enforcing restraint.

Some of them even have tattoos about the band. Sending messages via Twitter to the poor unfortunate boys in the band, threatening all sorts of emotional blackmail in order to illicit a response or 'follow' from them. It's sad and frightening.

I don't envy those boys one bit. How the hell can you possibly live anything like a normal life, meet friends, meet girl/boy friends when anyone you interact with is zeroed in by an army of demented teenage girls ? Anyone that is a 'threat' to their perceived ownership of the boys finds themselves the recipient of even nastier threats.

Thinking back, I am sure that fans have always been this... extreme, or at least some of them have been. It's just that with modern technology and social media, they get to share how they feel, and provide validation to their own fantasies.

It's a crazy situation, and it's a miracle someone hasn't been seriously hurt or had something bad happen to them.

Some of the fans have taken to writing fan fiction. Giving literary voice to their fantasies (I guess at least it's creative and constructive.... maybe). Some of these fantasies explore the idea that two members of the boy band are actually secretly in a gay relationship. The logic of this being that at least if the two guys concerned are in love with each other, then they at least aren't going out with any OTHER girls. (other than the fans).

Hang on.. erotic gay fiction, written by teenage girls ? That's not at all mixed up is it.

Get off your arse and cook !

So  far this week I have achieved rather little, creatively. I have been back at work for two days now and although I have gotten on well with making sure that I leave on time, today I did not allow myself a lunch break and I have again come home and vegetated infront of the television. 

I may be being a little hard on myself here, I did get off my arse long enough to clean the cats' litter tray out and wash up three days worth of cuttlery and crockery and run the vacuum cleaner round the flat. 

Also, despite not really feeling that hungry when I came home, I did make some dinner. I mean make dinner, not something processed, or something more of a cheat (processed chuck in the over stuff). I have a large amount of mushrooms knocking around in the fridge and I didn't want them to go to waste, so they really led my inspiration. With some red onions, peas and the addition of some rolled up back strips this made for a rather simple but very quick and very satisfying meal. 

The salad and cherry tomatoes have made lots of outings the last few days too. I did make a concious decision when I did my last round of internet shopping to buy some 'proper food'. You are what you eat after all, and even if summer is hiding from us, I can still take some culinar inspiration from it. 

It's a bit odd, but I had a small perfunctionary chat with Andy online last night, the usual sort of thing, congratulating him on recently becoming a father, asking if either of us have spoken to or seen anything of the people we last did a theatre production with. We agreed that we needed to find some time to have another get together. 

Tonight, my long term friend Helen is obvously feeling pangs of nostalgia as she's going through lots and lots of photos that I've put on facebook from either the last theatre production that we did, or from some of the videos that we shot. 

With facebook working the way that it does, this has prompted a couple of the others to comment or to 'like' some of the photos also. I wouldn't put money on us getting to the end of the week before someone else starts suggesting we do some more filming - which would be a good thing. Did I not start this blog moaning about how I haven't taken the time to do anything creative today ? (this effort excluded). 

I just hope that certain people don't start going on about wanting to do another theatre production.

Summer nights.... if it ain't on facebook, it didn't happen.

Although I've been on holiday this week, I have tonight completed a 6 hour shift in the out of hours call centre. It wasn't too busy, and although some times you're frustrated that your hands are tied in regards to what engineers you have available on the Sunday evening of a Bank Holiday, by and large, the vast majority of people are receptive and very understanding. 

Some people are slightly harder to help for one reason or another but that's just working with the public, I'm sure that's the same in any area. That's just the way people are. 

A 6 hour shift seems to pass so effortlessly, and so quickly. No pausing for lunch breaks, although I did have three cups of tea, and the rolls that I'd brought along with me. 

I had Chloe stay overnight Saturday, she didn't actually spend the entire time playing minecraft - which was something new. We sat and watched Star Trek (the 2009 JJ Abrams version). Despite starting it moaning and winding me up by saying that there's no difference between Star Wars and Star Trek, she actually really enjoyed the film. Even posted on facebook that she liked it. 

If it's not on facebook it didn't happen. 

It's been a really pleasant day today, weather wise. I haven't done any more to remove the remains of the bushes on the path to my flat - I don't want to hurt my back any more than I have done already. The walk back home from my shift of work was very pleasant, I do love the feeling of the fresh air, the quiet of the streets (I didn't see another human being) and the beauty of the stars in the sky. 

It is nice to get out and about a bit, even if it's only to walk to and from work. Walking is good. 

Need to get my clean on.

Saturday. Last two days before I return to work from my holiday.

I've had Chloe to stay most of the week, but she went home Thursday. She is, however staying tonight. I know that might sound strange and maybe even make little or no sense, but hey. That's life.

Just sitting on the sofa, having some breakfast of fake Shreddies (with demerara on top of course), cup of coffee and glass of orange juice. Trying to fight off Twilight, who seems to want to come and shred my left elbow in an effort to get me to stroke her.

No TV. Nice and peaceful, just the sound of the washing machine rumbling away in the background, the clickety clack of the keys on the iMac's keyboard that I'm using to write this on my ipad.

Okay, the reason the TV isn't on may have something to do with the BT Vision box stopping working since I have now cancelled the package and moved my telephone and broadband to someone else. There's been a few hiccups with the router or the broadband dropping out a couple of times, and I'm also keeping an eye on how fast the service is. I wanted to save money, but I don't want to do that at the expense of the broadband connection making my online life hell. When I say hell, I may be being a tad over dramatic. After all, it's not like it's the end of the world if I have to wait three milliseconds for a web page to load instead of one, is it ?

Scroll down one the page has finished loading then. I am currently looking around for a set-top box to replace the BT Vision box thingy, and have asked myself, how important is the ability to record TV these days ? Almost everything is on catchup TV, or available on Netflix or Love Film. This leads me in the direction of a 'smart' set-top box. One that will allow me to connect to the internet and to use on demand functions from 4od, BBC, ITV etc. It gets to the point where I could spend anything between about £30 (for a plain freeview box) to about £300, (for a freeview HD recorder with smart functions).

Starts to look like its worth buying a new TV with those features built in. All of these things I would rather not be buying at the moment. I don't want to be putting more large purchases on my credit card(s), and I'm not convinced that I actually spend that much time in front of the TV anyway.

So I spend hundreds of pounds buying something that I only use occasionally ? I think I'd rather spend the money on a Dyson.

what could possibly require such padding ? 

The light bulb in the en-suite gave out several weeks ago, and in a fit of efficiency, having waited said number of weeks to do anything about it, I ordered the special bulb off the internet on Wednesday (or Thursday, it's not important). Anyhoo. It arrived yesterday.

bubble-wrap supplies for next 300 years............. 

An anonymous brown box, surrounded with industrial sized bubble-wrap. Inside, was.. well, the light bulb and.. more bubble-wrap. I now had a replacement light bulb, and enough bubble-wrap to recreate at least three of the monsters from Tom Baker's era of Dr Who.

Despite my moaning above about not spending money I don't have, I have been on a mini spending spree lately, but I consider the light bulb a necessity rather than a luxury. I have also bought some new toys for the cats to play with, and those I will show when they arrive, no doubt with their truck load of bubble-wrap or polystyrene.

I have done little editing of my nanowrimo book whilst I've been off. I think I did some on the first day of the previous week I'd had off (I had the week before Easter off, went back to work one week and then off again). I need to be more disciplined.

There are too many distractions.

Another that I have also recently taken steps to limit is Facebook. I have actually gone so far as to remove the app from my ipad (I'm annoyed I can't actually remove it from my phone. Seems it's a default app or something). I have found that I'm not now wasting time endlessly looking through the comments of comments or inane minutia of other people's boring lives. I have gotten just so fed up with some of the bigoted short sighted rubbish that some people put on there. I want to argue with them, or correct them, but lets face it. You can't argue with stupid.

I am getting annoyed with my mobile phone too. It's just so slow, and doesn't seem that responsive anymore. This may of course have one of two causes, that either as it's getting older and more full of apps (even though I don't download any), it's overworked processor and limited storage capacity are getting stuck in the mud. Or it may be that it simply has never really recovered from being dropped in the washing up that time.

Being a bit-geek, I am already considering two courses of action here. I know that my contract does not expire until August / November, sometime, but after checking on Three's website I can upgrade in July at no extra cost, or I can upgrade early and pay a fee. Anyway, the two courses of action ? Well, I am looking at the new Blackberry's coming out, the ones with keyboards (don't even get me started on the point of a blackberry without a freaking keyboard), or something older, that isn't a smart phone at all. A candybar phone that just maybe takes pictures, does text and phone calls. That's it. Since I've got my ipad, and I do take it lots of places with me (reminds me I must show the new case I bought for it, that matches the one for my kindle paperwhite), and this means that I don't use the phone that much anymore for internetting. I may have previously trawled through facebook etc, but I just don't like working from it that much, compared to how easy to use and responsive the ipad is.

Do I get really rebellious, and get rid of my mobile phone altogether ? People would think I've gone mad.

Well that's a short one...

Too cool for school...

I don't want your freedom.....

Day One...

But hang on, doesn't Lent start the day AFTER Shrove Tuesday, I may have over egged this a little. Over egged ? Pancake day ? Yes I did crack a joke, or is that yoke there...

Okay, so I've now slapped myself round the face. No more puns. (in today's blog). Today was a bit different, not just for the freedom from facebook, but because I went in much earlier to work than I have done for quite a while. A 9am start may not sound that early to some people, in fact to most people, but none the less, it was a big step for me. Prior to this, 10:30 was the recently earliest start. Being worried about oversleeping (as is my habit at the moment) meant that I didn't get to sleep until about 1:30-2:00am.

As indicated in my video last night, I did indeed get a torrent of comments from friends at the announcement I would be avoiding Facebook until further notice. A certain irony attached there, having to spend time explaining, on facebook, why it is that you want to spend time away from facebook. I know that some people have gone so far as to suspend or delete their accounts, but I didn't want to take that step just yet.

One of my friends text me later in the night (or morning as it was, but I was as described above very much wide awake), to let me know that after all the trouble I had gone to, to inform people that they could still keep up to date with my goings on via Twitter, that I had in fact, stupidly, mistyped the address for my Twitter account. Idiot. This now leaves me with the conundrum of going back onto facebook in order to correct this post. I am already in the process of uploading a corrected version of the video from yesterday. I guess that as Lent doesn't technically start till the day AFTER Shrove Tuesday (although, again I am not doing this for religious purposes, just for personal growth), then I'm in the clear. Right ?

The Eden Prescription

There is also the idea that I can set up for my facebook account to update its status with my tweets. I'm undecided if this constitutes and breach of the idea of the exercise. I, one the one hand will still not be looking on facebook, but my friends will still think that I am. Hmmm. Answers on a postcard please.

No. Not a postcard, I want to know what you think before the end of my abstinence. Post here is terrible.

So what I have I noticed so far today ? Well, I've noticed that I've actually finished reading the book I had on my Kindle. The Eden Prescription. By Ethan Evers. I have to say that at times I struggled to keep up with the science bits (never was any good at chemistry) and the sheer number of characters in it. When it gets going, it really gets going.

So finishing a book on my Kindle, isn't a new thing, but when you consider that last night I was about 88% through the book. By about 6pm this evening, I'd finished it. So, what next ? Well, I think I'm going to pretend to be all cultured and intellectual, and have a go at reading A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

I did feel a little without something to occupy me at the bus stop this morning, as I arrived half asleep, but still before the bus did (which is certainly much better than arriving after the bus does). Normally I would have a browse through facebook. Today, I did not. Nor did I 'feel the need' to cop crafty looks at it whilst at work.

This evening I've vacuumed the flat (I think it's a daily chore now, I've set my standards so high), I went over and spent a bit of time, and had two cups of tea, with my parents, brought them up to date with the goings on in my life.

oooh, and I did some washing, which I must get out the machine...

The fact that I've been bothered to write a blog entry, sitting here listening to the radio, or the music on my computer, without even the barest temptation to turn on the TV, or keep flicking back and forth checking for those all important updates, leaves me feeling more... content, purposeful.

To facebook or not to facebook.... that is the question.

I've decided to test myself, and to give up Facebook, and live TV until Easter. I know this is traditionally usually referred to as Lent, (the marking of abstinence in the Christian calendar from Shrove Tuesday and Easter). I'm sticking a disclaimer right here, because I'm just using the timing as a motivational device. I am absolutely not religious (I'm an atheist), don't have a problem with other people being religious, it's just not for me.

I want to see what effect removing these two massive distractions (time sucks) have on my life, and how much more productive with my creativity I am as a result. I have (as you can tell) already been blogging and vlogging a lot more in the last week.

To that end, I will still be making videos and writing entries, but I will also be making sure that I get some 'more solid' writing done. In school we would have called it 'creative writing', I wouldn't be able to guess what the hell they call it now. It still means making stuff up.



There was something else of a minor mishap this morning, which I will now save to tomorrow's vlog. Spoilers sweatie, spoilers.

Here comes the sun...

I write this, sitting outside (on my camping chair) basking in the gorgeous sunshine we are inexplicably blessed with. These things seem all the more special when you consider that it's October 1st today. Yes that's right kids, October 1st. Bloody hell, after all this furore about global warming, and how bad for us it is (going to be), no one stopped to tell us that it might mean I can write outside on a sunny day, in my shorts, IN OCTOBER. OCTOBER !

Did I mention it was October ?

I've gotten up reasonably early today (well, a shave before 9am) grabbed a coffee, after feeding the cats, and taken netbook with me to sit outside and enjoy the sunshine whilst catching up on some script editing and some reviewing for Beacon.

I even decided to risk letting the cats outside. It's so quiet, and there's probably no better time to let them have a sniff around than today.

Too often I lazily trap myself in my flat, in front of the television, or more often, in front of my Mac. Living on my own (sorry Midnight & Twilight, you don't count as people) that leads to a rather insular existence. Lots of moping and self reflection may be good for you, or at least required if you're a teenager, but at my age it's just a bit on the sad side. I don't feel a burning need to be with other people because I can't manage or survive on my own. But I do recognise that I learn the most from other people (usually all the ones I disagree with) and do enjoy the company of others, as long as they are the right people.

The group I work with (my team) at work the 'right kind of people'. Which I don't think is something that neither I or they would have said six months ago. It's been quite the roller coaster this year. I do feel good about the difficult times I've been through, because we (as a team) have all come through them together and that gives us a better understanding of one-another. I'm a great believer in whatever doesn't kill you, makes you stronger. It's as true for immunity to virus and germs as it is to resilience to emotional distress and conflict. Having said that, there is still work to be done. There is more for me to learn (from them) and about how to get along with people better, and achieve more.

Times gone by I think I have been so eager to get a result that I've knocked everyone and everything out of my way in my determination to get there. Unfortunately this always involved knocking over the very people I needed to help me get there.

By far the greatest pride I feel about this year is that one person in my team managed to be successful in getting a job in another area of the business they were really interested in, when they've been overlooked a lot before, two others have been headhunted by other managers to stand in as their deputies, and another has shined so well that I'm convinced pretty soon the same will happen to her.

I'm sure that if you asked any of these four people, six months ago, that they thought they would be in that situation, and how well we'd be getting along, they would have all told you it was impossible and not to be so fucking funny or stupid.

I would have probably said pretty much the same. I've changed, they've changed. We've all grown. I'm sorry this all probably sounds rather mush and twee or terrible Americanised corporate bollocks. But it's true.

Someone who my relationship with has moved in the opposite direction is my friend of nearly 20 years. The person that I've written 4 plays with, countless sketches and created improvised videos for the world to enjoy (or avoid). We've always had diametrically opposing political views, and it's been something we have always been able to work with, ignore and manage. It's actually contributed to some of the balance in our writing. Now we can't seem to see eye to eye on anything. I don't think it's down to the politics. I think it's much more deeply routed than that.

You may recall that we fell out during the production of the last show. It really does seem to have been the death of our friendship. How she was feeling and reacting at the time was due I guess to the severe strain that she was feeling at home. She's had domestic issues for quite some time, in that one of her sons has unfortunately been caught up in the drugs world, and this has also made worse (or been made worse by) his problems interacting with people. He is afflicted sadlywith not being where you would expect a man of his age to be, in terms of social mental development. I am sure there's a medical or psychological name for such a condition, but I'm sorry, it escapes me. She also has, from time to time, problems where her other son gets involved in what could possibly be discribed as the darker element of society, or seems to want to declare war on the drug dealers as a whole for what he perceives as their decision to ruin his brother's life.

All of these pressures take a place in amongst all the others of money and time that an awful lot of people feel at the moment. She also has to deal with suffering from a debilitating condition herself called fibromyalgia. She works from home, as is sadly no longer well for long enough to be in the mainstream workplace. (this wasn't always the case).

We fell out because we disagreed about how to organise some things, or how to make things work within the show. Increasingly her ability to invest productive time and energy to the show became an issue. She became steadily frustrated that I (as she saw it) had taken over and was running things less as a partnership and more as a one man show, with an assistant director / producer. This situation was not due to a lack of effort on her part, merely that she couldn't seem to focus on the things that needed doing.

I steadily began to recognise the symptoms of stress in her, and what certainly looked like her heading toward a breakdown. I could see this, because I have been in that situation before myself, and have been able to move on with my own mental well being (if you like) because I can recognise these traits and take action to deal with things before they get worse. Unfortunately, she wasn't able or willing to agree that this was what was happening, and pretty much saw that I was being mean spirited and making her feel worse.

In the end, I had to manage to juggle not only my day job, and my own outside work pressures (they were nowhere near the sort of thing she was going through of course),  protect her from the harsher elements of what I had been told or observed from members of the cast, and the some of the workload AND protect the show from the more destructive behaviors she was exhibiting. I do think I did a good job of this under the circumstances, because we managed to get to the end of the production with a show that was watchable, and enjoyable (although it could have been 1000 times better had we planned and organised better) and without our friendship exploding right infront of everyone involved.

I don't feel good about having to make decisions to do things without telling or asking her. I didn't like it, but didn't see an alternative at the time that didn't pose a greater threat to the show.

Somewhere along the line we have stopped communicating by telephone. I think this may be attributed to me getting cross with her after repeatedly being unhappy that she'd be on the phone to me for hours on end, when I've just come in from work and hadn't even had a chance to eat and was due back into work in 8 hours. These conversations would always be bad ones, that would make me feel shit, and would ruin my evening, or they would be ones that didn't actually achieve anything other than to moan about how much work there was to do, and how little time we had to do it. My observation at the time that we could achieve more by doing things than by sitting on the phone talking about them seemed to fall on deaf ears.

The paralysis of negativity is something I can see in people that are depressed, and also understand is hard to see past. I also know that the only way to feel good about achieving things is to get them done. You won't get the reward from finishing something if you never even start it.

She has now sent me several either lengthy (2000 word plus) emails or similarly long facebook messages, including one which she sent out to her nearest and dearest friends to 'brief' them on what's been happening in her life. In addition to this, she has now mentioned twice in different messages that she was offended because I haven't commented on her status at all. That I had 'hidden' her.

What's the netiquette about how often you should comment on your friends' status updates ? What if you don't want to, or feel the need to comment ? What if you don't because you're pretty much certain that what you say is going to start an argument ? Her updates are normally very political in nature, and mixed with rather lame personal attacks against those in power, that are usually all in capital letters. She also has the unfortunate habit of copy and pasting just about every pointless internet hoax or chain message that's doing the rounds.

I don't comment, because I think such things are either just rude or stupid, and say lots of things about how gullible and crazy the person repeating them is.

One of her longer messages that was sent out to a 'select' bulk of about 20 friends listed all the things that's been happening to her lately. Truly horrible things. Lots of our mutual friends made impassioned comments in reply to it. Was I wrong not to comment ?

I'm now left with the troubling problem of what to do. I'm not happy to be painted as the villain, but I'm also not happy to be expected to say things that someone likes just because they want to hear it, even if saying it will mean me lying, or being false.

To Vlog, or not, to Vlog. That is the question.

I've been playing around today with the camera and Final Cut Express to see how easy it would be to put the same person in one scene three times. It turns out that it's actually very easy, when you've spent half the day figuring out how the hell to do it.

After messing about with the technology vs my lack of skill and finally getting to a workable solution. Which I have uploaded onto the M27's facebook page for all the world to see.

I've also decided to have a little play with some of the footage that I've taken on my Blackberry of the cats, and edited that quickly in iMovie. Example of this  :-

Flip camcorder

I have been a little inspired lately by the vlogging style of Nerdzrl who seems to pretty much just take her  flip camcorder with her wherever she goes, and record her conversation to camera, and with real people too. I don't know if the good folks of Cosham would react in the passive way that the public in Canada seem to be happy with being filmed, which is funny really given our propensity to shove a CCTV camera in every conceivable location. (by conceivable location, I don't actually mean the ones people conceive in, although you never know....).

When I was a teenager, like most teenagers, I was pretty convinced that I had a unique and special way of looking at the world, and no one else really understood. It wasn't just me they didn't get, THEY also didn't understand how the world REALLY was. THEY just couldn't see it.

Well now that I am (ahem) older. My opinion is pretty much the same. Except maybe just a little (a little I said) arrogant. I do think I look at the world in a slightly different way to most other people. Does that make me some sort of undiscovered genius ? Hell no. It probably means that I am more socially backward than normal people and have far too much thinking time on my hands.

Anyway, I have digressed. When I was a teenager, I kept a diary. That's not that uncommon. A lot of teenagers do. Inspired as I was by 'The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole' (By Sue Townsend) in all it's generations, I picked up whatever writing implement was to hand at the time and committed to paper the workings of my demented, self absorbed teenage mind. There are volumes of my diary, pages upon pages of it. I told my impressionable, naive, and intellectually reckless young self that 'one day you can publish this, and it will be of comfort to anyone that reads it... ' not so sure about that one now or that 'your children can read it when they are teenagers and will be happy to know that the sort of things they are going through are the same things that their dear old dad was going through when he was their age'. hmmm. If there is one thing that is certain in the universe it is that teenagers most definitely do NOT want to be reminded of any similarities with their parents. As my daughter rapidly approaches her teenage years, one thing comes to mind. There's no way she would ever be interested in reading it.

For one thing, it's pages and pages of self opinionated drivel (see nothing changes). Deluded is the word that comes to mind.

So in the face of my daughter reading my diary, and suddenly having a tearful revelation that I too, suffered as I was a teenager, that I too did awkward uncool things. (still am doing - how's the hat going ?) That I too was a jumbling mess around the opposite sex. A mess around the same sex for that matter.

My point, my point ? Oh yes, there WAS a point. Is the written word more suited to this kind of outpouring or is the video blog (vlog) better ?

Have we all stopped sending burthrday cards ?

A thought occurred to me today, as I placed a comment on someone's facebook wall wishing them a happy birthday. Does anyone send birthday cards anymore ?

No wonder the Post office is screwed. Not only is everyone busy emailing each other instead of committing their important (and unimportant) messages on a piece of dead tree, but they aren't feeling obliged to send birthday cards to people they barely know or like.

Perhaps this isn't the case, as I haven't seen a rash of redundancies at Birthdays or Celebrations. There are, however more and more operators jumping on the Moonpig model for personalised cards.

The point I wanted to think about was, well, apart from showing what a tight git I am, do people think any less of me for adding some carefully considered words to their facebook page instead of spending over a pound, on a card I'll probably forget to give to them anyway.

Have any of them noticed that I habitually say pretty much the same thing to each person ? IE 'Happy Birthday mate. Hope you have / had a great day !!' (The double exclamation mark is really, really important). Of course there is the other comment 'Happy Birthday. Don't do anything I wouldn't'. Which may not leave them with much of a list of things to avoid, none the less. Hardly original is it ?

Looking by the number of comments from other people, I can only assume that perhaps not all of them would have bothered to buy a birthday card before the advent of social networking. (Internet stalking).

Does this signal a greater level of emotional attachment and well wishing, made easier by the technology, or does it demonstrate the absence of real feeling in a clinical world ?

Do we devalue the sentiment by not having to pay to send it ?

All I'm bothered about is that facebook handily reminds me that it's someone's birthday so that I can write my 'standard birthday comment'.

Barbie (no Ken) - Just some food, some home made scifi and a load of friends

Last night was the annual Beacon Barbie. This year moved to a date in
May, in an attempt to find some better weather.
Following an excellent recent trend of being packed to the rafters - or
to the marque at least, with a very well attended gathering. Being the
premier viewing of the end of 2009s season of The Adventures Of Stephen
Brown. 'War Of The Words', which was written by Chris Wilkes and my good
self. It was well received, and I have to say the effects and editing
were very well done. Matt Hampton did a great job of directing and
editing the show. There was the odd little thing, that perhaps could
have been done better (damn that boom, wanting to get in on the action
so darn much)... and, Matt, all I can say is 'EXIT'. Nuff said.
It was a good night out. Sadly Helen couldn't make it, she had too much
to do in the office.
What was even stranger, for me was that I didn't take one single
picture. No shaming of people with some facebook tagging.

Have typewriter WONT travel.

After spending the first day of my holiday, not being on holiday (by
going into work) and having my daughter to stay overnight Saturday, I
guess I now start my holiday proper.
Everyone I speak to, that I tell that I'm going on holiday, will ask me,
'are you going anywhere'. No. I reply. I'm going to stay at home.
Sometimes I elaborate a little. Sometimes I don't. See the thing is, I
tell myself that the reason why I don't do as much writing as I would
like, is because I'm too stressed out from work to sit down and look at
a computer. Which we all know is rubbish, because anyone that knows me
will tell you that I spend my evenings with the computer, sometimes more
than one computer on. Just not doing anything useful with it.
Easy for me to blame work, but as I am now on holiday, I don't have that
excuse do I ? I've had some good days lately, where I've been due to be
at work late, so wouldn't normally get up until 10am. I've actually
gotten up much earlier and given myself a couple of hours first thing in
the morning to get some writing done. This indeed has worked, and I did
manage to get some pages done. Also the other week when I had a day off
midweek, likewise I got up stupidly early, for what was my day off, and
told myself I was going to be writing from 9am. And I was. The 'I've got
to be in the office by...' mentality seems to work for me. If I do the
writing at the other end of the day, then I find it very very easy to
come in from work, and a) put the TV on. That evil, evil thing in the
corner of the room that sucks away all my time. or, b) I sit down, and
think, 'I'll just give myself half an hour and then I'll start'. Well
that half an hour turns into an hour, turns into two, turns into three,
and then I tell myself 'oh, it's too late to start anything now, I'll
have a look tomorrow'. Tomorrow never comes. There's much
procrastination in my head. I find it very easy to talk myself out of
doing things, and that I can do them later on. It's funny, because I'd
never behave that way at work. At work, I'm always much more focussed
and driven by the power of the moment, and the yearn to 'just get things
done'.
I get too comfortable. I laze about.
When I have 'good writing days' I just get up, and get on with it. There
is no other common denominator than that. I love to read how other
people that write, have their methods, have their 'rituals'. I'm looking
for that 'eureka' moment, that revelation that when put into practice
will create this stream of fantastic and wonderful prose that emanates
from my brain, travels down my arms, into my fingers, where it is
skilfully and rapidly converted into text.
That's all rubbish of course. (or crubbish, as my daughter would say). I
forget who it was that said that the only way to write is to put in the
desk time. I paraphrase, badly. I'm so lazy, I can't be bothered to fire
up firefox, and go have a google to find out who the quote came from,
and actually quote it correctly. My only defence is, that if I fire up
firefox, I will be drawn inexorably into facebook, or twitter, or some
such other distraction. How many times a day can I hit refresh on the
BBC news website. Surely the world isn't going to end without me knowing
about it ?
So. To try and break the pattern. I am not staying at home. I am not
going away. I am going on a writing holiday, but not one of those ones
that cost you loads of money to go sit in some beautiful countryside
with a load of other people that also don't know how to write. (I have
no idea that's what those things are like, I've never been on one..
perhaps I should... but I'm too tight to do it. Too tight, and too
cynical. I digress). I mean I am going on holiday into the spare room.
I type this from my bed, and like the bed you sleep in on holiday, it's
unfamiliar to me. I've never slept in it before. I don't use this room a
lot, and infact, have never stayed in it. Even though, I am still in the
same flat, everything sounds different. The amount of darkness outside
the window is different. It's strange enough to me to not be
comfortable.
It's just that its cheaper than actually going away for the week. I have
my trusty netbook, my office chair (I wouldn't normally take that on
holiday somewhere with me, that would be wildly impractical). Wow, I'm
using up my whole years' quota of parenthesis in this entry. And I only
wanted to say a few short words. I don't know how many words this is,
because I'm on my netbook, and there is a limit to what it can be called
upon to do.
I am actually going to still get up in the mornings, just hopefully much
earlier than I have on previous 'stay at home' holidays. Sometimes I
haven't dragged myself out of bed much before midday.
This all does beg the question, how the hell do you continue to motivate
yourself to get up every day, if you, well, don't have a reason to get
up. If you're unemployed, or a kept woman, kept man for that matter. (I
live in hope). It must actually be hard to do that, and not descend into
an absolutely apathetically lazy, self serving ever decreasing spiral of
diminishing effort and returns.
After all, there's 'Jeremy Kyle' to get up for. I'd count that as a
reason to stay in bed until well after it's over. There's always 'Loose
Women'. I do love loose women, as much as the next man. You can take
that more than one way. A bit like the..... never mind.
Anyhoo. I will be, not hopefully, but am certain that I will be making a
difference this week.
Considering I want to write, I have a strange emotional attachment to
the idea of writing, and the elation that I get when I complete
something. The idea of starting something, when there's a blank page in
my pad, a blank screen on the computer and a blank head from whence the
ideas should flow to fill all the above is actually quite daunting. 'The
trick is, to stare at a blank piece of paper until your head bleeds' - I
believe is another badly remembered and uncredited quote. Uncredited
here. It is actually credited to someone. I just can't remember who.
When I'm actually in the throws of working out how to get a
character/story from plot/place/situation A to plot/place/situation B, I
don't think of the writing, I'm thinking of the problem at hand, which
is to get from A to B. Much in the same way you would think about
finding a route through a city you know, when you have the map memorised
in your head.
Like that, except, with this, you get to decide not just the route, but
also the layout of the city, the design of the buildings, the reason for
the journey and indeed the destination. Because there are so many
variables, and it's such an open field, its sometimes (I find) difficult
to know where to start.
Well, as Mary Poppins said, 'lets start at the very beginning, what a
very nice place to start'. Let's not confuse things by saying that when
writing you don't have to start at the beginning at all. That's just
going to get confusing, isn't it ? After all, even if you start at the
middle, it's still the start isn't it ?