-
What The Titanic Can Tell Us About George Osborne
On Sunday, it will be exactly one hundred years since the sinking of the Titanic. Certain, best not mentioned, persons on Twitter aside, it’s an event widely recollected, with many lessons that have gone into history. The main two of these are, of course: 1) Make sure your ship has enough lifeboats to rescue everyone…
-
A Gopher’s Guide To Gophering
Eastercon is the British national science-fiction convention. I’ve attending five Eastercons in total. In 2010, I volunteered for the first time as a gopher. Since then I’ve spent something like twenty-five hours gophering, if we’re counting, which I am even if you’re not. I think it’s a cool thing to do, so I thought I’d…
-
On The North-South Divide
There often seems to be a lot of confusion about where precisely in the UK “The North” begins. I’ve just seen a particularly egregious example in which a friend who hails from the Birmingham area (strictly speaking, Coventry, I understand) appeared to be being somewhat scornful of Northerners, apparently blissfully unaware that if he is…
-
It Is Done!
After spending the last three months on the biggest purple patch of my writing life, I now have a complete first draft of the current novel in progress. This morning, at about 7:30 as the train was somewhere around the Three Bridges area, I got to type the words “THE END”. It was rather cool.…
-
My Thoughts On Christopher Priest’s Clarke Awards Broadside
Christopher Priest is an author whose work I like. While I can’t claim to have read any of his recent works, The Inverted World and especially A Dream of Wessex are on my all-time favourites list. They say you should never meet your heroes, but perhaps in the modern era that aphorism should be revised…
-
The Best School Lesson I Ever Had
A chance remark today led me to remember what might well be the best school lesson I ever had. Certainly, I can’t think of something that not only taught me a particular point both effectively and efficiently, but was also wonderfully fun into the bargain. The teacher in question was Mister Ready (pronounced “Reedy”), who…
-
Showing Colour-Coded Point Of View (POV) in Scrivener
I’ve mentioned a few times that I use the rather excellent writers’ word processor Scrivener to write all my fiction. It’s now available on both Mac and Windows, so if you’re into any sort of writing, I’d very much recommend that you give it a spin. One of the great things about Scrivener is the…
-
Why I’m Switching From The Liberal Democrats To The Greens
“Imagine two men, sitting in a car. The car is in London, and they wish to travel to Exeter. They’re starting at the same location, and going to the same place, but they are nonetheless arguing, because one is adamant that the best route to take is M4/M5, while the other is equally insistent that…
-
I’m Not Hoarding, I’m Working Towards the Next Level
I’ve tweeted several times of my love of hoarding points on my Costa Coffee loyalty card. I haven’t quite yet got to the point where I’ll be leaving my card in my will, but it’s not far off that. Then just the other day, a thought occurred to me, which was there ought to be…
-
Dear Sean, Talk To Them, Not Me!
A couple of weeks ago, Sean Penn decided to throw his weight behind the Argentine claim to the Falklands, or at least to state that the UK should enter negotiations over the islands’ (and the Falkland Islanders) fate. He was roundly criticised by many, including me, for not appearing to particularly give a damn about…
Jonny Nexus 