Coastalblog

So Nanowrimo is completed for another year. thank fuck, I can have some kind of existence back I'm reasonably happy with this year's effort, though it will of necessity take quite a lot of polishing . Still, done. In other news, rumours that Joey Barton is to appear in Mike Myer's new film "So my brother's an axe murderer" are completely unfounded.

What with the weather being cold but dry, your intrepid correspondent spent yesterday hiking across many a field in the interests of healthy exercise. The effect of which was rather ruined by the pubs visited at along the route. However, in the interests of research much was gained by the consumption of a different beer at each pub, the results of which are here presented for your edification. Pub 1 The Robin Hood, Mawdesley Sensibly, we decided to get the majority of the walking out of the way before the first pub was visited. So a brisk hike hour and a half along the Leeds/Liverpool canal from Burscough took us to Rufford, where we struck out across desolate fields for a further hour or so. The original plan had been to skip the Robin Hood first up, returning to it later on. By the time we arrived, however we were cold, and one of the party had a decidedly mutinous knee. Cue the first pint (and a medicinal Lagavulin, to warm up), which was Phoenix Brewery's Thirsty Moon. Jolly ni...

Well, it's been an interesting couple of months since I made the momentous decision to jack my job in. I got a few odd looks at the time but on balance I think it was the right thing to do. The only problem is the ruinous damage it's done to my bank balance It's just been so wonderful to have the time to sit down and think about things that a few months ago I was too flat out to bother about, i.e. my future, what I want to do with it and so forth. it's been just as wonderful to get some writing done and to reconnect with the creative side of myself. Lo and behold once I started writing again my mood lifted immeasurably (I wouldn't bandy loaded words like depression about, but I was certainly getting in some foul tempers). The most wonderful thing of all has been falling in love with my girlfriend all over again. Not that I was ever out of love with her, but before I was tired, or she was tired, and on the rare days off we shared the pressure would always be to do so...

Off to the bosom of Mrs Coastaltown's family for the weekend as it's her birthday. Normal service resumes next week (including Ormskirk's glowing seed pods - the town centre traders strike back). Cheerio.

I'm learning quite a lot at the moment. This is mostly coming from this years NaNo attempt. On the plus side I'm learning how much easier it is to write when you have a plan to work to, on the minus I'm learning that I really should stick to first person perspective, as my thrd is very weak indeed. However, it's proving to be enormous fun to write, and several ideas are spinning out from the central themes. I do love the sensation of a story mutating before my very eyes. The other fun thing was sitting in today on the stuff that I'm going to be teaching next semester. It's been a few years since I've been in formal education, and the most striking thing about it was how fresh it all felt; specifically the sensation of learing things for the first time. The best example I can think of is that, as I was reading through the course bumf on haiku writing a haiku suddenly seemed like a refeshing idea. I've written god knows how many in the past, years ago when...

Some of you may recall that quite a long time ago I blogged about a Lincolnshire schoolboy, Alan Penell, who was imprisoned for stabbing a schoolmate to death with a lock knife. What he did, I argued, was reprehensible but not all that surprising. For a small group of people school is unmitigating hell, a weird place with shifting, indefinable rule-sets where the unfortunate can find themselves ostracised and humiliated to the point of absolute desperation. The only surprise is that this sort of thing doesn't happen more often. Guess what? . The ineivitability of this is as depressing as the actuality, and the root of the problem lies in the parent's response. "The bullying was blown completely out of proportion." Yeah, maybe to you it was, maybe to all his contemporaries who took such delight in it it was just a bit of fun, but to Tommy Kimpton it was a constant source of misery, a prison from which he saw no form of release. I'm not being an apologist for his ac...

What with Nano and what have you, I've let things slide here. Most remiss of me (the Nano itself is going pretty well, better than I expected anyway). So anyway, I am back in the world of paid employment after my (much needed and much enjoyed) month and a bit off. I am being a barman again, in a pub (which is short term measure, exciting things should be happening in the New Year but I don't want to put the mockers on them by banging on about them now). Now pub bartending is v. v. different from restaurant bartending, the upside being that you don't have to be anywhere near as polite. The down side beng old men who've sat at the same stool for forty years, have "their glass", and assume that you telepathically know their order (such as yesterdays FIRST SHIFT where and old guy wandered up and grunted "usual" at me, to which my response was a fairly understandable "wtf you've never seen me before in your life, nor I you, how on earth do I know...

And in a further improvement to my already pretty good day, I've just been informed that two of poems will be appearing in a forthcoming issue of FIRE magazine . this being the first concrete result from my decision to jack catering in and work on the writing for a while it's given me a significant boost. And so off to lunch.

In his usual inimitable manner in the comments below Jimmy makes an excellent point, I am failing in duty as a chronicler of all things Ormskirk if I don't mention the planned "next phase in the Aughton Street Regeneration" (how I love it when town councils attempt to sound like somthing they're doing is, you know, important. I imagine the meetings being interrupted by cries for "the implementation of the primary stage of tea generation" whenever they want to put the kettle on). Now, I want you all to do something for me (apart from Jim and Robin, who already know the answer). Close your eyes and imagine your town centre. There's probably some tasteful block paving perhaps? A bit of public art? Maybe a clock tower? Now think long and hard about what it's missing, what would really complete the picture? Some civic flowerbeds perhaps? Maybe a replica of the world famous Mannekin Pis? Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. What your town centre really ne...

Seriously, it's been shitting it down all day here. Dull dull dull. In other news I am firmly ensconced at my computer wrimoing like crazy. It's all going swimmingly so far (the tactic being to work on several chapters simultaneously, it's astonishing the developments that that throws up) and I have to make sure the net's not on at the time (too many distractions), but it's all going pretty well. hence lack of updating, a situation which should be rectified, I'm sure. And will be, promise.