This week lockdown continues. There’s no going back. All our lives have changed, although it seems that the basics of existence in my home town haven’t. I may have to stand two metres away from every one I meet but I still meet people I know on most occasions I leave the house. Accordingly, I still end up wittering on at the poor buggers for hours. So far, I have had one appropriately socially distanced walk with a friend who was going the same way with me and numerous chats.
It made me wonder … for the first time ever in my life, it feels as if I am living through a piece of serious History. Maybe I’m beginning to understand what it was like in the War … great for those who lived but probably a bit of a pisser for the 60 million who died. As a kid I remember asking my father,
‘What was it like in the war, Dad? We’re you scared? Did you know we were going to win?’
To which Dad’s answers were, basically; exciting, yes but not as much as one might expect looking back on it and yes.
Meanwhile, there’s the lovely story about Mum in the garden at her grandparents house seeing an aeroplane and rushing out to wave at it, little realising that it was an ME109, presumably hedge hopping home. Her grandfather tried to persuade her to come and hide under a tree. She told me, yesterday, that the plane came back for a second pass during which, as he skimmed the lawn, the pilot waved. I know the pilot skimming the lawn and waving bit was true but it’s the first time she told me he did a second pass. He was low enough, and close enough, for her to see that his breathing mask was hanging off his face, that he had blonde curly hair and that he was smiling. She thought he must have a little girl like her at home. Perhaps, but more likely, he was just … human.
Talking to a friend in Australia the other day she said that, over there, they appear to be winning and the numbers of cases are stabilising. However, if they eradicate it from Australia that means the entire country will have to close its borders until there is an effective vaccine or treatment; two years, minimum. That’s … a hell of a thing.
Are we going to revert to a time when hardly anyone travelled, but, isolated as we are, everyone has a lot more time to think?
Until the big nationalist backlash recently, the world seemed headed to become an increasingly international place. Most youngsters seemed more likely to see themselves as citizens of the world or, where I am, certainly of Europe. They’d watched StarTrek, they assumed that at some point the world would be governed centrally. And of course, we have the internet. The fact I’m discussing the vagaries of lockdown with a friend in Australia says a fair bit. These days, there are many folks I would consider to be my friends who are all over the world. I have never met them, may never do so. It seems weird that, on the one hand we have this internet based, global identity as human, and on the other … nationalism is booming. What’s that all about?
The thought of Australia closing its borders and, potentially, other countries, reminded me of something that happened to McOther and I when we moved into our first house. It was in a small village in the deepest, darkest fens in Cambridgeshire. Our first evening in the village we decided to go to the pub, but it was shut, so we went for a walk. As we stood admiring a lone and slightly incongruous mandarin duck on the village pond an old man joined us and we got chatting.
‘You work in Cambridge?’ he asked us, at one point.
‘Yes …’
‘Hmm, I went to Cambridge … twice.’
Turned out he went there once for a shopping trip, thoroughly disapproved and hadn’t been since. The first time was at the start of a trip to Africa to fight Rommel.
Is that where we’re headed? Less travel, more time to stay at home and think? While time to think is good, open minds are one of the benefits of travel, and heaven knows, it would be a pity if the average English-speaking internet user’s mind narrowed any further. But is that narrowing of minds a reaction to the internet? A clinging onto the stable in the face of a rather rapidly changing environment? Maybe. I dunno.
At the moment it strikes me we are at a tipping point in history, but I don’t know how or why or what for. The political rhetoric over the pandemic sounds increasingly empty and pointless to me. It’s really time we all said bollocks to parties, formed a coalition and worked together. As another friend was saying on t’interweb the other night, we have a chance to make a new start, a different world. The old ways need to change, but what we change them to … ? Neither of us knew.
Czechoslovakian-made black glass button – try saying that with your mouth full.
Despite being locked down life continues to be surprisingly busy. Trying to keep my statutory two metre distance on a rather narrow footpath the other day, I wandered over the verge into the field next to it. It’s currently fallow, nothing but maize stalks. I immediately found a black button. I thought it was plastic and I was going to throw it away until, turning it over in my hand, it had that rainbow iridescence which only glass gets when it’s been buried a good long time. Thinking there was an outside chance it was made of glass, I put it in my pocket just in case.
It looked quite gothic, or Victorian. Turns out that from about 1850 black glass buttons were all the vogue – Victorian then. I suspect this is what I have, although I can’t be 100% sure. I did discover that many of them were made in Czechoslovakia by highly skilled button makers. Mine is not exactly the apogee of craftsmanship but still a nice find. As I walked beside the footpath, eyes down, I found some shards of clay pipe, the obligatory one pence piece that is always found on any trip out that involves looking for stuff, and a piece of Bellamarine jug – a kind of wine vessel used in the fifteen and sixteen hundreds. I was really chuffed as I recognised this and it was confirmed when I posted it on line and it was seen by an expert.
Occasional Bury St Edmunds skywriting
Also I came home and stumbled on the answer to another riddle. For some time now, I have noticed the occasional sky writing over Bury St Edmunds. I remember a few years ago seeing someone draw a smiley face with the help of an aeroplane. Yesterday it was this one. Shortly after seeing it, there was a knock at the door and the lovely peeps who run McMini’s boy’s brigade group had delivered an Easter egg. They were just stepping back out of range as I opened the door so I thanked them and pointed out the sky writing, which was still there. Saying how great I thought it was and that I’d seen others. Oh yes, it was the C3 church’s turn this year, they told me. So know I know it’s my fellow Christians. And that also explains why I haven’t seen it the last couple of years – because it’s a Good Friday thing and we’ve been away for Easter. Anyway, I’ve always loved it. There’s a joyous generosity in doing something fun, or funny, when you may never see the reaction. It’s one of the things I love about eyebombing, the secret, quiet, just-for-myself, in-jokiness of it. I think it’s a lovely idea.
Meanwhile, McMini having spent much time playing computer games with his friends is now doing video calls during which they all bust light sabre moves. Yes he has set up a group and they have light sabre combat sessions. It’s chuffing marvellous. He gets plenty of exercise and needless to say he is horrifically geeky about it – ‘this is fourth position, drop stance,’ he tells me cheerfully as he kneels on the floor with a pair of light sabres extended towards me. He’s also learned the special word for fighting with two, which I forget. I am frequently called to the darkest part of the house to fight duels with him. Me using the Darth Vader red one versus his Luke and Anakin. It’s a bit like Power Rangers. There’s a lot of posturing and poncing about during which, usually, you can just stick yours in his stomach and tell him you’ve cut him in half. That said, he keeps cutting my hand off. Obviously as the parent my job is to lose as spectacularly as possible in a manner that causes me the least physical injury. We’re doing OK so far.
This should be my desk right now.
On the work front, I’ve been having some time off, well … when everyone else is, you have to, right? But it was our holiday so now is a time for pretending I am abroad and drinking a bit more than usual. But also, I had a bit of a crisis of confidence.
Short stuff is not my metier. I like it but it’s not going down too well, lacking world building, too many hints, clumsily dropped abut stuff going on which our hero doesn’t know but we do.
It’s probably safe to say that I do better at long and rambling. But I don’t have the mental capacity for that right now. The long and rambling I’ve chosen to write has a fiendishly complicated plot which needs to mesh seamlessly with the permutations of the even more nightmarishly complex plot of the original K’Barthan Series.
This is where my desk actually is …
What in Arnold’s name am I doing? NEVER write a full length prequel, people it’s the most gargantuan nightmare ever. But this one is looking as if it could easily hit three books. I want it to be good though, I want it to be Rogue One good. Not … bodged like the Phantom Menace. It’s so complicated that I had to put it aside for a while because my brain is too mushy to cope these days. Sigh.
On the up side, I think I’m close to nailing a decent marketing strategy for the audio books. Also, I’m beginning to have that twitchy feeling in my fingertips I get when I want to write something new, so after resting the complicated nightmare, I reckon I’ll have to get on and finish that. Also, I finally got the alts off to Gareth this week. Woot! Jeez I was dying inside doing those, really not sure that I was doing the right thing. Luckily I had to ring him about some other stuff so I was able to check, properly speaking check rather than filtered through WhatsApp messages and my phone’s auto gag, that I wasn’t being a gargantuan bell end. Amazingly, it seems I really was being helpful and not the most god-awful nightmare client. Phew.
So now I have a bit of marketing work to do … a lot, which is a bummer as it involves using my actual, real computer which is rubbish outside. So I’ll have to write it all first, I think and then go in and do an hour a day. Mailerlite is fab but it does take a terribly long time to open and close the interface when I want to edit the hello protocol or send an email. Which reminds me, I do need to send something to the lovely peps on my mailing list, flagging up the impending arrival, I hope of audio. Although it’s a case of seeing if the books go live first … the first two are live in many places but Audible will take another three months or so.
Also in production is the K’Barthan Shorts, Hamgeean Misfit: No 3. Not my best work, the shorts, but people seem to be enjoying them a reasonable amount. Next one is due out in May or June, along with the first two K’Barthan Series audio books, probably (officially) June or July but as I said, it’s a bit of a mix and some are already live.
The week after next, for some ridiculous reason unknown even to me, I’ve signed up to do an online book festival. All well and good, except I’ve now realised it’s on Twitter yegads. I had completely given up on Twitter. I couldn’t work out how to follow a feed I was interested in and could find nothing of worth in the wall of noise. I am appearing on 22nd April at 2.00pm BST, which is NOT British Summer Time as you’d expect. Apparently for their own bizarre reasons, the Americans call Greenwich Mean Time, British Standard Time. I’ve no clue what they call British Summer Time … I should probably try and find out. But I’ve been caught by this one before, when everyone was on line waiting and I didn’t turn up until an hour later because … we were on British Summer Time at the … well … time, and I’d foolishly assumed that’s what BST was.
Anyway, long and the short is, I hope to be there at 1.00 on 22nd April, although I won’t really know when to start because I’m guessing that’ll be dependent on my actually finding my cue; a twitter post from the festival organisers introducing me … Gulp. It’s highly unlikely that I will find it but I’ll have a go anyway. Then I have to work out how to stream live on twitter – I might try that over the course of the coming week – and do an 8 – 10 minute reading from a book and answer questions … if anyone at all is able to find me. I’ve chosen Escape From B-Movie Hell and I’m pretty sure which bit I’ll read, but I’m wobbling about this and not quite sure whether to persevere with learning to make something meaningful of Twitter or bow out gracefully, before disaster occurs. There’s an author friend who is also doing this so I will seek twitter guidance from her and if it looks too complicated I’ll withdraw as soon as I can so as not to mess them about. I’ll let you know more, or less if I quiche, next week.
So yeh, life goes on. Weirdly but at the same time, surprisingly normally, considering the bizarre times in which we live.