Tag Archives: women in sci-fi

2 Nov 2025 · 6:28 pm

Did I eat that? Yes I did!

Misadventures in food …

This week, I felt the urge to write something light and pithy because it seems to me there’s not quite enough of that in the world at the moment. To that end, I thought I’d describe some of the bold culinary experiments I have undertaken recently. So here we go. One bit of this has been used elsewhere, the rest is virgin territory. First up (do skip to the cake wrecks section if you have read my October newsletter) …

MTM’s adventures in foraging.

One thing I particularly enjoy is getting something for nothing. Enter foraging. Not only does foraging involve getting free food but, in the case of mushrooms, it’s free food that is about one calorie per metric tonne. If you are trying to eat sensibly and healthily and you are doing that with a dash of food group and calorie control, this is a bit of a bonus.

In the picture we have: top left beefsteak fungus and dryad’s saddle from above and then showing the underside. On the bottom, parasol top and underside.

For the last three years I’ve been finding parasol mushrooms, dryad’s saddle and beefsteak mushrooms in the same places and putting photos on a foraging group on Facebook to confirm my efforts at I.D. This year, the fourth, I was finally confident that, having had the experts agree with my identification three years running, I could probably pick and eat them without risk of death. So when we had a muggy week last week and a lot popped up, I threw caution to the wind and picked them.

Then I ate them, so you don’t have to.

In a lot of cases there are reasons the edible foods in our hedgerows have fallen out of use. Usually it’s either because they take from here to the arse end of eternity to prepare, there’s something that looks exactly like them which will kill you or they merely taste vile.

These were surprisingly good.

Beefsteak fungus is offputting. It’s red/maroon, glistens like chopped liver and it oozes red goo. It’s always a joy to find one at the furthest point from the car on your walk when you have nothing to carry it in. Bearing it proudly home in your hand, past other walkers who look at you nervously, clearly wondering why you’ve just walked a five mile circuit with a pile of chopped liver in one mitt (yes, that’s what it looks like) can be a challenge if you are easily embarrassed. I found the Dryad’s saddle closer to so I didn’t have to carry it quite so far. Typical as it doesn’t ooze anything. Although it served to hide the beefsteak mushroom so the are-you-a-serial-killer looks from other walkers stopped, which was nice. The parasol mushroom came the next day. I found it walking round the grounds of McMini’s school waiting for the rush hour traffic to die down before driving home.

In the picture above we have, top left, Beefsteak Fungus, cooked, Top right, Dryad’s saddle chopped and uncooked. Bottom Right, Beefsteak fungus, chopped and uncooked, and Bottom left, Dryad’s saddle, cooked.

Verdict

Parasol mushrooms are lovely. I will eat more. Dryad’s saddle is supposed to smell like watermelon or cucumber. Actually it’s the smell of a flavour. That flavour is when you pick and eat a raspberry from the garden and there’s one of those tiny brown shield bugs in it. Not 100% pleasurable.

Texture: The texture of parasols is like a shop bought mushroom but slightly more watery.

Dryad’s saddle on the right in the pic, cooked (bottom) and uncooked (top) has a fantastic texture (although you need to use commonsense with which bits are edible and which are too tough).

Beefsteak cooked (top left) uncooked (bottom left). I think we can safely say the texture has to be managed correctly. On it’s own, well, you know that bit in The Blob where it comes through the grating in the cinema? If you don’t I expect you can google it. Yeh well, if you could imagine eating something of a similar texture to that you’re probably in the right area. BUT if you cut it very small, fry it with onions, garlic, tomatos, a glug of wine, herbs de province and throw in a little cream and some pasta and it’s bloody delicious.

Scores on the doors: Parasol 10/10 om nom nom. Very good with onions and cream or paired with scrambled eggs and marmite toast. Dryad’s saddle: 5/10 smells like a shield bug and sadly has a tang of that in the palatte too, only good with other mushrooms I suspect but the texture is mucking farevellous. Beefsteak: 7/10 quite an acidic taste and the texture is gopping so you need to cut it small and cook it with the right things but if you do you stop noticing the texture and it tastes fabulous. I can take or leave dryad’s saddle but will definitely eat parasols and beefsteak fungs again.

And of course, extra bonus points, I’m still alive. Which is nice.

I also had a giant puffball that week but I haven’t mentioned it because I’m confident identifying those so there wasn’t that same will-I-die-frisson.

Cake Wrecks

Shortly after these adventures, still basking in my sense of self-sufficiency, we jetted off to Portugal for a week. While there, I enjoyed a special pudding of the Algarve called, Torta De Armêndoa, or Torta De Armêndoa do Algarve to give it its proper name. This looks like a kind of wholemeal swiss roll with something very reminiscent of custard through it instead of icing. I love this pudding. It is one of my favourite things.

However as our favourite Algarvian haunt becomes a bit more curry-and-chips and a bit less pork-and-clams or fried-squid, Torta De Armêndoa do Algarve has become harder and harder to find … to the point where I was only able to have one portion. Meanwhile, my other favourite pudding, Dao Rodrigues (imagine baklava made with egg instead of pastry—it’s a lot more delicious than it sounds peps) was literally nowhere to be seen. There was only one thing for it. I was going to have to find out how to make these things, and then cook them. Myself.

Knowing that Dao Rodrigues requires special equipment and is insanely complicated to make, I realised this was not something I could learn to do straight away. Torta de Armandoa, though. That was a different matter entirely. I looked up ‘traditional food of the Algarve’ and found a picture of this thing. Then—God bless Google Lense—I searched for it with the legend, ‘recipe for this dish’ and after years of crap results for something similar, with a similar name, which is not the pudding I was looking for, Google finally came up trumps. Woot.

Picture of whole meal looking swiss roll filled with yellow icing.

Torta De Armêndoa do Algarve

Thank you to this lovely blog, where I found this picture and the recipe. I have posted the picture so you can see what the pudding looks like in real life, although I think most of the ones I’ve seen in the Algarve tend not to be iced on top. Anyway, onwards.

The basic gist is that the wholemeal-looking bit is a meringue with ground almonds in it and the zest of an orange.

Anyway, the meringue bit done; egg whites and sugar whipped, almonds and orange zest folded in, I then set about making the custardy-icing-bit which is interestingly counter-intuitive to someone versed in making things like Real Custard, with eggs. Basically, you make a sugar syrup, then you stir in the yolks from the eggs you used to make the meringue. Then, in the antithesis of any sane custard-making technique, you heat it, as if you’re trying to make it go like scrambled eggs, stirring all the time. Instead of going lumpy it thickens up to a similar consistency to butter icing. Weird, but also kind of cool. What I suspect I should have done here, just to keep the whole thing from getting too sickly, is to use two table spoons of the juice of the orange I’d zested, rather than the two table spoons of water suggested in the recipe.

Once that’s done and the ‘cake’ bit is cooked, you let everything cool and then you get the flat tray-baked cake, spread the bright yellow custardy-gloop over the cake. That lovely line from The Beatles’ I Am The Walrus

‘yellow matter custard dripping from a dead dog’s eye’

was going through my head all the while I did this. Because I’m classy like that. The final results did nothing to dispel that particular earworm which continued relentlessly through my head, on loop as I regarded the results of my labours.

Yes. I give you Torta De Armêndoa, do Algarve.

You can see why the earworm persisted can’t you? I mean, it looks more like a surgical truss covered in pus but in my defence here people, it was surprisingly tasty. I present for your perusal a slice on a plate that looks a lot more like the real thing than this somewhat terrifying view from one end.

We had friends round for dinner so I tried it out on our brave diners. Luckily I’d already done them some prawns they’d enjoyed, so they trusted me. Amazingly, they liked it so much that when I offered them a chunk to take home, they rapidly accepted. Although they forgot it—which was a shame—because it meant I had to eat both their slices, with a cuppa, a few minutes ago.

The rest of it is sitting on a different plate with a glass bowl over the top which makes it look like a domed exhibit at some victorian shop of horrors … or possibly an art installation made from surgical waste.

Plate with a blue rim with a circle design at quarters, a red on yellow each side and a yellow on green at the front. On the plate is a swiss roll style cake which has been left overnight with a glass bowl over the top (still in place in the photo). Yellow custard-coloured icing is oozing from between the rolls of the Swiss roll so it doesn’t really look like a cake at all. It’s all sat on a wooden table with other bowls in the background one black with a lid and one translucent plastic with green leaves inside.

I know, terrifying.

Verdict

Well, yes, my Torte de Amêndoa, do Algarve does look like an utter abomination, but it tasted pretty good and more to the point, quite authentic. Despite containing enough sugar to induce a diabetic coma in a large elephant, the presence of almonds and egg seems to have tempered the sweetness considerably. The orange zest also helps on this score.

Looking at mine compared to the original on west coast cooking blog, I think I should probably have given the egg yolks a proper full-on beating, instead of just flapping at them ineffectually with a fork to get the stringy bits out. Think more fizzy-omelette-comme-Mere-Poulard than the somewhat desultory stir that I did.

Additionally, the texture of mine has come out a bit stodgier, I suspect, down to the fact UK ground almonds are ground up much smaller and peeled first. I have bought some straightforward almonds (un salted and unpeeled). Next time I’ll whack a few of these in the blender and see if I get a closer texture to the Algarvian original. I think I’ll also try adding a little of the orange juice to the sugar syrup because it could be a little less sweet, even if it was deliciously eggy.

Eight out of ten, then. I will definitely try this again.

Last but not least …

I have finished my latest book. I’m just doing the final sweep now before I format it and send it off to the beta readers. It’s not my best work, but it’s the middle of three and I have a decent idea where the rest is going to go, so I am extremely happy.

If you want to volunteer to beta read it, you can find more information, and a form to sign up here.

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Tagged as author blog, author parent, full time mum writing, I fucked this up so you don't have to, istuffedthisupsoyoudon’thaveto, M T M Makes a complete tit of herself, M T McGuire, Mary Fails at Modern Life, off topic, women in sci-fi, women writers, writer

21 Sep 2024 · 9:04 pm

Hello again, hello …

Crikey but it’s been a long time hasn’t it? I am well aware that this is not good for my readership and that most of you are long gone. However, life has been very busy. I suppose everyone gets back from holiday in September and has to catch up on the month and also do All The Things that those of them with kids were putting off over the summer. I confess to being no different, although, today I have a cold so I have decided that running around like a blue arsed fly will not be my lot and I am going to spend it sitting down doing things I enjoy. Ergo …

Chaos fairies have been in abundance this week, when are they not? Although I have managed to remember my own name, and even some other people’s. I have kept my eye on the ball enough to get my lad to and from school at the right times, with the right kit washed and ready for a whole week while McOther went to Arnhem on a history walking tour. This process confirmed to me, very strongly, that I am not a morning person. But we managed it anyway. Woot.

Picture of a hollyhock flower with a bee inside it collecting pollen.

At one point I had a hilarious meeting with the school bursar who was so stereotypical that it was like interacting with a character from a comedy comic strip.

The speed limit on Mc(not so) mini’s school site has recently dropped from 15 to 10mph. After 7 years of 15 I do tend to do that speed on autopilot now so I have had to be very mindful that it’s dropped. Basically, if the car is bunny hopping along in second gear, I know I’m doing the right speed. If it’s running smoothly, and I’ve forgotten to stop and put it into first, I’m going 15mph.

So there I was, having just turned onto the site, about 100 yards in, drifting along on auto pilot. It was 5.00pm and I noticed there were lots of cars still parked at the pre-prep and was wondering whether it was late pick up, or a parents’ evening or similar.

As I lurched over another bump and gave it a bit of a squirt to stop it bunny hopping, I was brought back to earth, as the revs dropped again, by a movement at the side of the drive. A tall man in the kind of tweed suit you’d expect to see on Colonel Blimp was striding along with his arm out at about 45 degrees from his side waving it round in a circle.

Is he looking at me? I wondered.

Yes, I decided he probably was. The gesture was not one I’ve seen but I assumed he meant slow down. I eased right off the pedal and checked my speed, which by the time my very dodgy vision was able to present my brain with an image of the speedo that was in focus enough to read it (more on that story, later) was definitely bouncing about a bit at the 10mph mark.

OK not speeding now then, probably was before. Never mind, all’s well now. Phew. Job done. Smile and creep on past. But no, he continued to wave at me. What did he want? I checked the speedo and the errant eyes worked better this time. Yes, it was just below ten.

I’m going about 7mph now mate, I was thinking. I can’t slow down any more, so I stuck with 7mph and continued on by. It wasn’t like he had a speed gun, so it wasn’t his fault if he didn’t know I was going under 10 miles an hour, I decided as I approached the next speed hump. He was still waving his hand, presumably because he wanted me to go slower, no stop yet though.

There is normally one of those things that tells you your speed at the bump there, which I’ve slightly come to rely on to check I’m complying with regulations, that would have helped both of us know my speed for certain and has the added benefit that I can see it, but I was disappointed to note it wasn’t there.

I slowed even more for the speed hump. That was the point at which point he ran over and banged on the window.

Well that was a turn up. I stopped, and wound it down. Somewhat flabberghasted but also wondering why, if he wanted me to stop, he didn’t just … you know … put his hand up, palm towards me, in the universally acknowledged signal for stop. He appeared to be absolutely incandescent. And before I could even take a breath to say,

‘Hello there, can I help you with something?’ he started in.

Here we go. I thought. People do that same slow down gesture as I motor carefully through villages at 30 because they are certain that a car like mine will be speeding, so I was already harbouring misgivings that he was one of those. As such, it was probably best to just keep schtumm and see what he wanted. It depended how reasonable he was and what he had to say I guess. But since he was some random male I had no clue what he was about, but I could always burn away if he tried to open the door.

‘I am Arnold Rimmer*, the bursar of this school and when I signal for you to stop I expect you to do so please.’

*Not his real name, obvs.

Well, it would probably have been a good idea to actually signal that he wanted me to stop then. Never mind. I looked up at him in silence, the only thought in my head apart from, doesn’t he know how to signal stop? was, hmm, somebody’s done assertiveness training.

That, and a certain amount of surprise, of course, because I don’t think anyone’s talked quite as comprehensively down to me as that since I left preschool, and I had to hand it to him, the way he tacked that ‘please’ on the end took the sentence to a new level of rudeness and, yes, aggression, whether he meant it to or not.

Well. On the upside, it was nice to know he was the bursar and not some weird fucking rando, on the downside, it was very clear that he was about to go into orbit. Previous experience of this kind of situation has shown me that it’s best not saying anything to these people. You just nod politely until they’ve finished and then carry on with your day.

Even though it was extremely tempting to suggest, politely, that actually signalling ‘stop’ might have been more effective than just waving his arm about in some vague and random gesture, I reflected that it was unwise, and more pertinently, pointless. He had already decided who and what I was and no evidence or polite suggestion to the contrary was going to change his view, that much was clear … he had me pegged as evil. Forever. Not that he gave me time to so much as breathe before continuing.

‘How fast were you going?’ he demanded as I took a breath in to ask if I could help him.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘But I really don’t think it was much more than about twelve.’

‘It looked much faster than that to me,’ he said.

I didn’t reply. I think he said some other stuff but I’ve blanked it out. When he was done I drove off. At 10 mph. Except I started off in the wrong gear so my car was having none of it so embarrassingly, it bunny hopped the entire way up the drive. Now he’s going to think I’m speeding at any point when he sees the car driving smoothly.

Fucking weird though. Really, fucking weird.

That story there was going to be more of later …

Other things I have been mostly doing this week? Buying eye-wateringly expensive spectacles. My son and I needed eye tests. I have noticed, for some while, that I can’t always see things close up … or far away to be honest, but then I discovered that there were days when the instruments in the car … well I can see them, I just can’t always read them straight away. And that’s very bad so I booked an eye test immediately.

McMini’s eyes needed adjustment and he chose new frames, the most expensive frames in the shop which are made in Japan using the same technique that is used to make samurai swords or something ridiculous. For the love of the almighty. Raises eyes to heaven. They do suit him though.

Not the glasses in question…

Meanwhile I discovered that I now have astigmatism in my right eye as well as my left. I had no idea that could happen. I thought you were born with it but no, it grows. So there’s a new fact I’ve learned this week. Here’s another one. Varifocal lenses are extremely expensive. I’m going to try contacts as they do lenses that act in a similar way but I’ll still need specs whatever. I’ll have to test the lenses out as apparently some folks find they just make everything feel blurry. We shall see. I have chosen new glasses (the cheapest frames in the shop) although they were the ones that best suited me as well so … swings and roundabouts.

Writing news.

The writing has been coming along. I’ve been managing to do a little bit each day, which has been grand. It’s mostly editing so far, and shuffling scenes around so they fit, although I have a cold at the moment, just for a change, so I probably won’t be able to do much until that’s gone.

Bastard Chaos Fairies

Yep. The little bastards are back. This time it’s my fitbit they’ve got into. Yesterday it suddenly went yellow. I plugged it into its charger and rebooted it which seemed to fix it for a few minutes, then it went yellow again and completely died. I’ve no idea what’s up there but it’s not even a year old. Return it and get a new one I hear you say. Well yes, I could do that, I thought if I could find the chuffing receipt. I know I bought it in October but that’s all, which was kind of annoying.

Worse, I know I threw the box away recently, as in put-in-the-recycling-they-collected-two-days-ago recently. So that’s also sodding annoying. I have no receipt, no delivery note … nothing. That’ll teach me to tidy up.

I did everything I could think of and then clicked the help thing and got a call back. Turned out I had, indeed bought it from Fitbit, and while I couldn’t see it on my dashboard after Fitbit became Google, they could. So I have a shipping label and it will be off to Holland by DHL on Monday to be fixed, or at least switched. It’ll take ten days, and it’ll be a bust one that’s been fixed, but I’m really chuffed not to have to stump up for a new one.

Here’s another thing you never knew.

On the usual Saturday morning trip to the market today, there was sad news from the egg sellers. Apparently one of the major re-homing shelters for urban foxes from London is near them and many are released into their woods. This is usually fine, but occasionally, once a year or so, a fox gets into their hen coops and kills everything. Last night a fox got into their bantam coop and killed all 12 of them.

Interestingly, the girl also told me that the reason foxes kill everything is because they will take the bodies away and bury them to eat for later meals. So it’s not bloodlust after all. Nope. It turns out your basic fox is just a panic buyer.

Onwards and upwards.

Afore ye go …

There’s a fabulous free book giveaway on today so if you want to snaffle a copy of Few Are Chosen, now’s your chance. There are a stack of books in the promo, you can find them all here:

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2 Jun 2024 · 6:04 pm

Meh.

OK here’s a TMI alert for everyone. This is far too much information, very much TMI. If that’s not your thing, please feel free to pass on this one. The rest of you… enjoy.

Last night I was unfortunate enough to have yet another visit from Cardinal Chunder and Mr S’hitattak. Jeez what is going on? Actually no, let’s stop me there, because I think I may know.

After the Stomach Bug That Would Not Die, coupled with the stress of possibly putting Mum in a home which I knew would devastate her, and all the money worries over the last two years, and then her dieing and all the gubbins and aftermath of that, I have been left a bit run down. When I am tired, the first thing affected is my digestive system which makes it much harder to kick a long-term, double-ard bug bastard with this level of persistence into touch. At the moment, I’m on HRT. After having two coils I now have pills for the progesterone bit and the same oestrogen infused alcohol gel to rub on my legs. The pills have to be taken on an empty stomach. I’m not sure what happens if they aren’t but I’ve assumed it means they don’t work as well.

The instructions suggest I take them an hour before food or two hours after eating. Before the Undead Stomach Bug I would take them when I went to bed which was usually anywhere between half ten and midnight which meant my 7 o’clock supper had between two and four hours to vacate my stomach beforehand.

However, when I am knackered, my digestive system slows down. I discovered this by din’t of throwing up A LOT while I was doing my A’levels. Usually that was caused by eating something too rich, or too late. The meal would then stay exactly where it was, until a few hours later when, if it was something really rich like a pork chop, my stomach would decide it couldn’t digest whatever it was, throw up it’s hands and admit defeat, at which point, I’d throw up.

So essentially, stomach bug aside, I think what has caused the last two attacks has been partly that I’m still recovering, and therefore tired, but also I’ve taken the HRT pill two or three hours after dinner on a stomach that is tired and lackadaisical—not to mention still very full of food. Ever since I’ve been taking the pills I’ve been much more menopausal and have had much more trouble getting a good night’s sleep. You need a good 3 hours to get proper REM in and I’ve been getting two hours unbroken rest if I’m lucky, waking up 5 – 7 times a night like I have a newborn or something. It’s been particularly bad all week.

I tried taking the pill later, in my regular 1 am wake up slot. I’m guaranteed to wake up at 1, 3, 4, 5 and 6 at the moment, which is a pain when I usually have to get up at 7. This hasn’t made much difference so far. I could start taking the pill in the morning, which might work because it has to be an hour before food, but not if it’s holidays etc and I’m having a lie in and wake up at 9.30 or if we’re going somewhere and have to leave early and I can’t have anything to eat before I go, and spend the day ravening hungry.

Naturally sleeping really badly makes me tired, ergo the digestive system goes slow, and with each successive night of disturbed sleep the digestion is slower and presumably the stomach fuller each time I take the pill on a supposedly empty stomach at midnight. So, presumably the effectiveness of the progesterone pill gets less and less as there is more and more food on board later at night … so I get more and more menopausal symptoms, until I get so knackered that my stomach does a go slow, and, if I eat something rich like curry it throws up it’s hands and … yeh.

Last night, after feeling a bit more nauseous each time I woke up, I was finally sick at 5 am, while poor McOther was getting ready to go to a car boot. So I literally had to wander into the bathroom while he was cleaning his teeth, carrying a small pot, bid him a cheery, ‘good morning’ apologise, and then proceed to do the level up from farting and coughing at the same time; sitting down on the loo and cleverly emitting copiously from both ends of my alimentary canal. Mmm. Poor man. I bet he enjoyed that. Isn’t life a peach? Let me tell you, this is not an ideal way to start the day for me either. And despite being 5 am, it was clear that my stomach had not even given a nod to digesting my supper. I was also pissed off that I didn’t get to church or do anything fun today because I wasn’t ‘empty’ in time.

So I have to decide if I’m going to have another coil or if I’m going to try the patches first. I slept like the dead with the coil and gel combo and have always struggled with the pills so I suspect they may not be for me. I guess I should give the patches a go as they may work better, seeing as the coil did. So another trip to the Doctor’s on Monday, I think.

There are still another few weeks before my results come back but I think everything barring microscopic colitis has been ruled out.

Still feeling a bit nauseous as I write so it’s rice tonight. But I’ll put a tiny bit of ragu in it to make it more interesting.

On the upside …

I’ve been far too ropy to do anything today so I have sat in the garden, in the sun, in a deck chair in my pyjamas and read a book. I also repaired to McOther’s lounger where I had a very pleasant little sleep so all is good. I just need to be really careful what I eat from now on I think, until I get on a more even keel financially and the Mum admin is done.

I have money worries for myself now. Mum used to pay my brother and I expenses to go see her—‘Darling, you must pay yourselves because it’ll probably be the only bit of our money you’ll ever see.’—and I no longer get those regularly. I am feeling their loss, on top of a succession of enormous and thoroughly unexpected bills and in a very long month the housekeeping is supposed to arrive on 1st of the month but it’ll be the 7th or later this time because of the way the days fall. But somehow knowing the end is in sight helps a bit.

Other upsides, or at least reassuring things. I am having grief counselling about Mum which has started and is really helpful. The counsellor said that it is very common for illness to accompany grief so I feel a bit better about that side of it.

Other news this week …

Yesterday I had a very enjoyable day at Watford Comicon. It was a lovely venue and there were lots of lovely folks there, including, among the guests, an actual Dr Who (Colin Baker).

Picture of authors at a table selling their books

Thanks Simone for asking someone to take our picture!

There was also a fantastic bunch of traders with some amazing things to buy and look at. Unfortunately there weren’t that many folks in. Maybe everyone decided the last weekend of half term was too much hassle and they just wanted to stay home. Despite it being quiet the punters who did come along were great and I had some very interesting conversations with some lovely people.

The event was staged at Watford Leisure centre and extra bonus, we saw some wild parrots flying around in the grounds afterwards.

The noisy cricket now has two slow punctures so I’m thinking I should probably get my alloys recoated at some point as this is what usually happens, as they get older and more rusty, they start to leak.

Other comicon news, eyebombed the loos.

Although some things in the loos didn’t need eyebombing.

Writing…

Yes, I have done some writing this week. My main task now is to do the timeline. I couldn’t get it to gel and it was only as I tried to work it out in my head that I began to realise that what I really have is two books. Jolly dee. Both follow quite happily on from each other without cliff hangers so it should be alright once I’ve sat down and planned the timeline.

Probably …

So that’s grand.

Right that’s it from me. Hopefully I’ll have more interesting things to post next week. In the meantime, remember you can always grab any books I have free from this page, here: https://www.hamgee.co.uk/cmot3

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27 May 2024 · 11:51 pm

Let’s try kindness…

This week has been hectic although looking back on it, it’s less that I’ve had a hectic week and more that, after last week’s visitation from Cardinal Chunder and friends I was definitely not firing on all cylinders for most of the time. I finally got back to the gym on Thursday, even though I was still feeling a little ropy.

It did leave me a little time to browse the internet more than I should have done. There was also time to write which was good and finally, after some of the stuff I read on line, time to think. Yeh, I know, if I keep practising it might become an habit etc.

It also gave me more time to spend on social media. The result is … well I did enjoy all those posts about Rishi looking like he’d just got gunked on Tiswas but otherwise it’s all a bit grim. Yes, rant warning ahead. MTM steps onto soap box. Yep. Here we go. You might want to scroll on by but …

Blimey. What a bunch of miserable fucking bastards we are! Seriously. What is going on? I saw a post somewhere about young people and their many genders etc and the poster was commenting on what a load of bollocks it all is.

It wasn’t shrill or tub thumping but it wan’t needed. It was stuff that didn’t need said and yet, it was there and because there seems to be an awful lot of tub thumping shrill stuff about ‘wokeness’ it just felt like another person putting the boot in against kindness, respect and consideration for others, which is what a lot of ‘wokeness’ is supposed to be.

Perhaps I feel it more because my son has so many LGBTQ+ friends. But I get perplexed by this anti woke stuff. I don’t mean the endless pussy footing about in case we cause people offence. That’s just stupid and standing against that is fine. I mean the inability to see the difference between not taking consideration for others to extremes and just not considering others. The anti woke reaction I guess.

The one where the logic goes like this. Bob is LGBTQ+ and has behaved like a twat on telly. That must mean everyone LGBTQ+ is a twat like Bob. Even though there are LGBTQ+ people we’ve known all our lives who are friends and we know aren’t twats! Also, let’s not take the matter up with Bob because even though that would be logical we can’t reach him. Instead, let’s go kick our friend Eric who we’ve known for. years. Eric hasn’t even heard of Bob but he just happens to be LGBTQ+ as well and furnished with our new knowledge of famous Bob, who has been a dick everyone, we now understand that all LGBTQ+ must be dicks and since Eric lives round the corner it makes sense to go smack him. Yes, we’ll smack Eric, even though we have known his family for years and his father is our son’s godfather and we know he’s a lovely man etc etc.

Is this for real?

What fucking prick outside the brainwashed nimby in a police state thinks that one small aspect of a person defines the rest of them?

Also anti woke? Yes of course, because a few morons going over the top about getting offended now means that consideration and thought about other people is a bad thing. As if the fact someone has behaved like an arsehole and got offended over nothing gives the anti-woke brigade cart blanche to go out of their way to deliberately upset different, unrelated people who just happen to have the same gender, sexuality, hair colour (insert your own inane reason here) as famous person who’s behaviour they consider rude, in some warped ‘redressing of the balance’. Or ‘perpetuation of the pointless shit and enmity’ as I prefer to call it.

How old are we all? Three?*

*No. Most three year olds have already grown out of this kind of behaviour.

As the mother of a teenager, I feel beholden to say something.

There is always the disingenuous argument in any conversation about the modern youth’s approach to gender along the lines of x, y or z person has decided that they are a toaster, which stems from a misunderstanding of how they interpret gender, is largely irrelevant to the whole gender/trans debate and merely serves to muddy the waters. A bit like the ‘all lives matter’ mantra, when yes, undeniably all lives do matter, but the whole point of black lives matter was that, to a lot of the ethnic population, it felt like non-white lives didn’t matter. Back to the youth of today.

My son explains that there is a person’s sex, which is what you are born as, male or female and that is irrefutable, but your gender is more like a spectrum which is why some girls are very girly and some are, in many respects, blokes with boobs and a high voice. There is of course, every stage of girlyness or blokishness along the spectrum between.

That makes sense.

Yet still I see so much anti LGBTQ+ or minority of any description crap daily on t’interweb. More than when I was growing up in the 1980s for fuck’s sake. I find my self wondering why? Seriously. Apart from the obvious, are we really going that badly backwards? Question, why does anyone give a shit? Or at least, why do so many people give a shit about trivial rubbish like the way someone else expresses their sexuality? I mean, one; it’s not their business how much man, lady or in between anyone else feels. Two; if choosing to be one gender or another makes a person happier, and therefore more readily able to be kind to others, why would anyone stand in their way? Oh and three; did I mention that someone’s sexuality is none of other people’s fucking business.

I saw a Facebook post just recently; someone in East Anglia getting all hot under the collar because Chichester police dolled up a police car for pride week down in Sussex. That’s where Brighton is, in case anyone needs a nudge. The usual comments asking why they couldn’t spend the money fighting crime followed, from a bunch of people who clearly don’t understand how the allocation of budgets works in government, local authorities and large organisations. Here’s a hint, you can’t take the cost of a £500 vehicle wrap from a marketing budget and add it to a different one. That’s now how it works. I’m not saying it’s good but that’s the way it is in most organisations right now.

These folks who have to complain about everything do my nut.

eyes stuck on a whitewashed window to make it look like two miserable faces

You! Yes you! You miserable fuckers! You’re doing my effing head in.

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Tagged as an author with children, author blog, M T M Makes a complete tit of herself, M T McGuire, Mary Fails at Modern Life, off topic, women in sci-fi, women writers, writer mom, writer mum, writer parent

7 Apr 2024 · 12:25 pm

Respite and random thoughts about faith…

Blimey, this week’s been a bit of a roller coaster. As you know, last week I was having extreme difficulties with what felt like bowel-based armageddon. I’m going to relate the happy ending of that story (spoiler: I didn’t die in the end even though I was genuinely beginning to wonder which would go first, the virus or me). I should also run this with the caveat that it is mostly supposed to be funny, and/or reassuring to those in a similar position. But I have no idea which bits of what I write/say make people laugh. I know they usually do, somewhere along the way, the trick is just to make it look deliberate. So if I’ve misjudged this and none of it is funny at all my humblest apologies. I’ll try and find something laminating-bacon-level stupid to do over the course of the week to make things more interesting. Right. Disclaimer made, on we go …

Having cancelled our holiday I then hot-footed it to the Doc’s on Tuesday again, desperately seeking help but also the referral she suggested to see what in god’s name is going on with my insides. She agreed that the referral was a good idea and suggested I have another go at solids. ‘Rice and chicken … and maybe a hard boiled egg, but not much else,’ she warned me.

‘Can I have the egg scrambled?’ I asked her.

‘Yes, but no butter or milk.’

‘Can I have coffee?’

‘With a meal.’

Woot.

‘With a tiny bit of milk?’

‘Yes.’

God love her. So I went home, made myself a small cup of coffee and had a scrambled egg. It might possibly have been the loveliest thing I’ve eaten in my entire fucking life. Trooper that he is, McOther went off and bought some chicken which he divided, making some into a delicious pasta dish for himself and McMini. I decided I would do my portion with basmati rice, chopped onions and herbs, I also added a stock cube. It was surprisingly tasty.

The next day, I felt human. I went and had the first appointment, an ultrasound scan (clear) and then we collected the cat. I had energy. It was wonderful.

That night I felt so much better I decided to branch out with some different foods. The following lunch I had the chicken and bacon in an amatricana sauce that the boys hadn’t finished the night before on lovely big shells of pasta. I did forebear to have cheese. There were no ill effects or indeed any. Having not ‘BEEN’ for 24 hours, I was cautiously optimistic I might, possibly, have turned the corner. For supper I put lentils rather than rice with my chicken and veg and cooked it in the oven with a tiny bit of cider. It was lovely. As I went to bed, I took my HRT pill and the hayfever one, although with real work to do my immune system had stopped yanking my chain and I wasn’t having any hayfever. My hands had stopped aching too.

I normally take supplements. Not many but taking Magnesium L-Threonate has definitely helped my menopausal brain fog and also made me sleep better. I’d read a few days previously that Magnesium supplements can set off this kind of reaction so I’d stopped them. Feeling a bit awake but at the same time really tired, I took one and went to bed. I knew what to do now, I reasoned. If my bottom unleashed armageddon during the night I could fix it.

It did.

Here’s another useful nugget of information people. If you are having the shits in the night, it’s more likely to be an infection, having them in the day is more likely to be IBS or some other thing caused by your immune system pissing you about. Always useful to know that. I spent Thursday drinking diorolite and thinking I was going to die but manfully started in again with the scrambled egg breakfast on Friday. Supper was chicken and rice. I had no coffee, indeed, I am no longer addicted to coffee. I can now not drink any for a whole day and there will be no headache, which is a bit of a bonus. Let’s face it, something good had to come out of all this tsunami of crap. Come the evening I did not take a magnesium pill.

I slept like a fucking log.

Today I am very tired but I am basically fine. I know I have had something grim, I feel very post viral; weak and feeble the way you do after a really bad go of flu, but my weight has stabilised at 10st 13lbs (about 67kg I think) but I had a tom tit today and it was normal for the first time in about 6 weeks … Holy shit (literally I guess)! What a joy that was! I nearly took a fucking photo of it. But I didn’t because even I am not quite that bad, so instead here’s one of the absolutely enormous shit that pigeon did on my car (and long-suffering sister in-law) a while back.

Pigeon shit down the window of a Lotus Mwhahahargh! What have I sunk to?

And I took a walk up to the market today which feels so much better. At some point I will be having an endoscopy and a colonoscopy (either together in a couple of weeks or separately, starting with the endoscopy next week and the colonoscopy in a month or so).

Any takeaways from this? I probably should have stopped and rested at the beginning but I just. did. not. have. time. And I should have known it was a virus, because it had given my overactive immune system enough to do that the allergies and arthritic pain had all stopped. Well no, actually, I did know it was a virus, I just wasn’t sure if I was going to get better! I genuinely believed it might kill me at one point, because I’m not a drama queen at all. (Yes, that’s terribly melodramatic but, in my defence, I remember my Mum saying the exact same thing after she had pleurisy; as in, ‘It was awful! If I hadn’t had to look after your father I think I’d have happily gone then’.)

Also, I tidied up something I’d got lying about and turned it into a short story which I submitted to an anthology, so that’s grand. And I applied for a stall at the Ely Cathedral Christmas Fair, so that was grand too.

Thank you, everyone who gave me advice. It was actually really useful. I listened to/read all the links and stuff you all sent and it gave me things to try.

Now, if I can make this stick I have a target of getting fit and well by 21st when I have booked to go on a metal detecting rally half an hour up the road. Really looking forward to it as I haven’t been out for ages. And I’m going to go back to the gym. Possibly Thursday or maybe a week on Monday.

Other stuff …

A propos of nothing much, on the way home from the market today, I popped into the cafe next to the church to give them a bit of pay it forward cash. They know some of their customers, are really hungry but can’t afford to pay for a meal so you can drop a few quid in so they can give meals to these people for a reduced rate (or nothing). I then nipped into church to light a candle and say thanks for the end of the tsunami of crap. I tend to pay £1 each for them, I’m not sure if there is an actual price anywhere, but I didn’t have any cash so I did the minimum £5 card thing on the doo-hicky at the back which which is a safe 3 up front, anyway, I reckon. There was another lady in there, who was obviously having a bit of quiet time and as I walked back past her I stopped to ask if she was OK, but she said hello first.

I asked her if she was OK, anyway. I always ask this, because … I dunno … because I think it gives people an option if they need or want to say something, but they can also not say anything too, and it’s an important part of the ministry of that particular church, to me, because it’s a place of welcoming and inclusive kindness. Then as I got to the door thought about my remaining candles-in-hand and went back.

‘I didn’t have any cash so I’ve paid for a few candles up front, if you’d like to light one on me you are more than welcome,’ I said.

We got talking and she is new in her faith. She’d been brought up a Christian but it just hadn’t really clicked until recently. We ended up having a chat, which was lovely until we got onto the topic of how stuff sometimes aligns uncannily and … ugh, I ended up telling her the fucking ridiculously long Mother Death story which, even in the abridged version, took far too long. I only wanted to talk enough for her to feel relaxed and comfortable and then ask her about her faith journey, because I love hearing how other people came to have their faiths, possibly because my faith journey is so boring, or because I’m nosey, or quite possibly simply because I’m unable to do anything, even being a Christian, without hyperfocussing autistically about it. But also, because I suspect the lady would have liked to have talked about it, too, and that is far more likely to be the reason our paths crossed. But oh no, no. Nothing like that from shit-for-brains here.

If the good lord sent me to listen to her story, all I did was bloody well tell her mine. Perhaps that’s what he sent her for, to listen … poor woman if he did. I was desperate to ask her when I got to the end of her story but I could see she also wanted to be on her own for a bit too and recharge during her lunch hour. So I felt I should leave her to have a chat to God rather than me.

On the upside, I did make her laugh by telling her that one of the windows looked like Jesus jumping on a trampoline, a little nugget that was pointed out to me by one of the lay readers and she did pop in to church this morning for the first ten minutes or so.

On the downside … I comprehensively stuffed judging when it was time for me to shut up and I didn’t even ask her name. I think it was OK. She gave me a hug anyway. But urgh. It’s really frustrating to have a brain that’s really pointy in some respects and then be thicker than mince in others.

The thing is … I think I do have a kind of calling. Not to be holy particularly or anything, mostly it’s to write, but also to be kind … because my parents are both gone it is left to my brother and I to Be The Light. And I have a very strong sense that I must be the light now … it’s just that my parents made it look so fucking effortless but it’s actually really difficult. I’m not the kind of legend they both were were so … I can’t … yet. I might if I work very hard at it and all the stars align.

The thing is, maybe sometimes the fact I am a cheerful soul who is, to be honest, a bit of a bell-end is something I can use in a good way. It’s just that it’s a weapon I don’t quite know how to wield yet. I think it’s at the stage where it’s still a bit heavy for me, and metaphorically, I’m waving it round inadvertently cutting off the limbs of people round me and gouging walls the way a 6 year old would if given a real working lightsaber. It’s like a weapon of mass destruction in the hands of a rather overenthusiastic labrador … or my cat.

I think if I was to complete a what disciple are you? quiz, I’d be Peter; lovely guy, really sweet and well meaning, totally solid and practical too, but just … a bit of a wazzock sometimes. If he can say the wrong thing at the wrong time he will (God love you I’m sorry Peter but you know it’s true) and he’s just, so sensible and practical and well meaning and even though he blunders on from gaffe to gaffe he learns (unlike me). Maybe it’s because he’s so obviously human and flawed that I think he’s great … maybe we’re all Peter.

But at the same time, when I think about all the things I saw my parents do, the really amazing, treat-your-neighbour-as-yourself stuff, the overriding thing is that they were not embarrassed. They gave absolutely no fucks for social convention. On all levels there was simply the question, what is the right thing to do here? Oh yeh. That is. Check. Off we go.

The first time I saw a stranger in trouble on the street I stopped but I hung back, waiting for others to act. I was too shy to stop and help, myself. But then I shared a flat with someone who had epilepsy and she told me that actually, it really meant something when people stopped to help if she’d had a fit in a public place and was just lying on the ground. So now, if I see someone who looks like they might be in trouble I make a point of stopping.

If someone’s sitting down on the ground looking tired or weary, or yes, drunk, I ask them if they’re OK. Even if there’s a crowd round them I stop and ask (and the one time that has happened, when there was a crowd I mean, the woman on the ground was having a heart attack and nobody gathered round her had thought to phone for an ambulance, they were all just standing there, gawping. No-one was even holding her hand. So although six people had found her before me, I was the one who phoned). If someone’s begging I don’t always give them cash but I try to ensure I acknowledge their humanity and say hi.

Thinking about it. That’s the thing about my Mum and Dad. If there was some guy lying on the pavement with people stepping over him, my parents were not afraid to go over and check that he was merely in a drunken stupor, rather than seriously ill, and pop him in the recovery position if need be. They were never scared to ask people if they were OK, even if it might have made them look a bit stupid. In some cases they were not afraid to do something a bit dangerous, like give a homeless man a bed for the night.

While I looked on, not getting what was happening, my mum ran across the shingle of Shoreham beach and into the breaking waves to save the life of a child. She didn’t stop to think, ‘the parents might get the wrong idea if I manhandle their toddler’ or not even realise what was happening, like me. Maybe that’s the trick, at every level; getting to that point where the part of your brain that knows, ‘I should act/offer help, be kind,’ subsumes the ‘will I embarrass myself?’ awkwardness as the go-to neural pathway.

My parents were never afraid to step up. So I guess I’m getting there. I’ve got to the bit where I give no fucks about asking or offering or helping. But they were also really good at the aftermath and I’m not (unless it’s a crisis. I’m properly level-headed in a crisis but I’m a bit lumpy at the rest). I just need to get to the listening bit faster when it’s not a crisis I guess! Or I dunno … maybe I just have to hope that this afternoon was a time when the good lord had decided that what that lady actually needed, right there, was a well-meaning wanker. Although I’m not beyond thinking that it might have been that the well-meaning wanker needed a kind lady to talk to.

And yes. I think about everything I do in this much detail, which is why I write books I guess. Indeed it’s probably what makes the books alright. And no it doesn’t drive me that nuts. Although this mix of extreme self-awareness—and at the same time none—kind of dumb at times like Peter (sorry Peter) is sometimes annoying and I know I embarrass my very introvert husband constantly. But I can also let it go quite happily; chalk it up to experience, try to learn and move on. If I didn’t, I’d have probably topped myself, or been admitted to a long term mental institution, years ago. Never mind. I’ve got the no fucks bit down, so that’s a start. And tomorrow is a clean slate, after all. I can start again.

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Tagged as advice from writers, author blog, author blogs, faith, faith journey, god stuff, I fucked this up so you don't have to, istuffedthisupsoyoudon’thaveto, M T McGuire, Mary Fails at Modern Life, off topic, trying to be a writer, women in sci-fi, women writers

21 May 2023 · 6:47 pm

We’re not at home to Mr Cockup. Oh no, no, no, no.

Except we so smecking are. Mwahahargh!

Picture of an amber warning light for an automatic gate with plastic googly eyes on it to make it look like an irritated face.

Yes he’s a bit fucked off.

I was going to do a post about writing this week—and accompanying things—but the accompanying things got a bit out of hand and so I’ve gone off on a completely non-writing related tangent.

Do you remember a refrain from the Blackadder II episode where he’s made Lord High Executioner?

‘We’re not at home to Mr Cockup!’ he tells his team. And they fuck it up, of course, and Baldrick says, ‘Shall I prepare the guest room for Mr Cockup, my lord?’

Yeh, well … Mr Cock-up seems to have taken up permanent residence in the spare room and his omnipresence has affected most events this week. Sadly this time, my inefficiency has impacted on my ‘work’. I put ‘work’ in quotes because we all know that I don’t have time for a real job, since what I do is look after Mum and be a mum. My writing ‘career’ is the thing I pursue in the few minutes a week that I laughingly call, ‘my spare time’.

Here’s the thing.  For the last, I dunno how long, the cunningist of my most cunning marketing strategies has revolved around the crack dealer’s school of marketing. Give them books, get them hooked and then make them pay. To whit, I have been handing out cards … these cards … (see pic).

picture of two business card-sized flyers advertising free books.

The QR codes send people to a page where they can download The Last Word (top card shown) or join my mailing list (other card shown) and grab a copy of Nothing to See Here… In case, like me, readers can’t get the QR code reader on their electronic thingy of choice to work, there’s a link written out longhand as well.

When I changed ISPs a few months ago, I lost my website. I’d run out of space and there wasn’t enough room on the server to back it up properly … except that I didn’t realise that and so when I got the new site up and running and tried to upload the backed up file it told me to piss off.

On the face of it, this wasn’t so bad. I have an earlier back up which contains most of the material I’d want to keep. Also, I used a lot of orphan pages; that is blanks with information about my books etc but without the menu and distractions that might make people browse away before they’ve properly assimilated how fantastically brilliant my books are and ponied up for one. Phnark.

Those were stored on my computer. I composed and edited them in a very ancient copy of Dreamweaver … 2004 ancient, to be precise … and put them backwards and forwards using the ancient Dreamweaver’s integrated ftp. As a result I was able to upload those to the new site and so most of the stuff in my automations should be working as usual. But things with Dreamwever are getting a bit shonky—it being nearly 20 years old and that—so I’ve been attempting to use an alternative.

Anyway, because I’m so organised and efficient (oh ho ho) I made a list and started downloading the code for all the pages I wanted to use … except that then, I suspect, I saw a shiny thing, or something happened with Mum, or McMini needed a lift somewhere and I got called away, and when I returned, I thought I’d finished. What distracted me is immaterial, the point is I hadn’t finished the job that I thought I’d done.

Yes, it turns out I’ve been handing out these cards like confetti and sending people to my site to download a free book to read and all they get is a 404 error.

Mmm, well done MTM. Bellend of the week award anyone? Ah yes, that would be me.

Balls up discovered, I have now put it right and the page for people to go to when they click the QR code is back in position. However, my gargantuan cockwomblery does not end there. Oh, no, no, no …

It now transpires that the QR code on my mailing list sign up cards points people to a sign up page with my list provider rather than on my site. I did these cards when I had artwork but in advance of publishing the book so I had to guess what I’d call the landing page with a view to making it later—when there was a book there for people to download and I’d written an onboarding sequence. I duly made up a name for the landing page, which involved the working title of the novella rather than the one it actually has…

Can you guess what happened next?

That’s right. I forgot to make that page. I forgot I’d made the link. I forgot that was where the QR code pointed but I had the cards printed anyway. Once again, the helpful QR code was taking them to a page that said oops but this time, rather than an oops page hosted by me, it was hosted by Mailerlite.

Mmm. My professionalism knows no bounds.

Bollocks.

In order to have a neat link, I used a link shortener.  Needless to say, in the interim, the link shortener in question, Bit.ly, has drastically reduced the facilities of its free account so I can’t just make a new one for bit.ly/hupbook or whatever because I’m only allowed to use the ones bit.ly gives me, you know; bit.ly/1f*5hio;avew or something equally catchy and easy to print correctly and remember. So what did I do? Well, I just duplicated the signup page I have, and renamed it with the name I used when I made the original link. Simple! But also. Ugh. Head desk.

As you can see, my marketing’s been just peachy this week, say I with such leaden irony that if I decide to move this sentence I’ll need a special, heavy-duty winch. Then again, perhaps my … er hem … marketing prowess has been kind of OK because I can tell myself that I’ve fixed a long-term problem that’s been extant since mid January.  Which makes this a win. Obviously. Snortle.

How did I not spot this problem earlier? I hear you ask, except I probably don’t because I expect you’ve nodded off by this time, but as usual I’m going to pretend, for comic effect, that I did. Er … hang on … oh yes. How did I fail to spot this? Well the QR code isn’t the only thing on there, I have also written out the link … except … it’s a different link which goes to a real page which does exist and will allow them to sign up and download the book. Not a total disaster then but kind of weird, all the same. I’ve left it like that for now because an alternative means changing the artwork.

Going forward (not a phrase I like but probably the best one to use here) people can at least sign up to my mailing list or download a free book with those cards, now. They probably won’t but that’s not the point is it? The point is that they can.

It’s been one of those weeks this week.

Similarly, I ordered a new case for my phone. I needed a wallet case because I like to have a single card in there and be able to go out with just my phone without being caught short of cash. Also, if my wallet’s nicked and I have to stop everything else I can still pay for things in a shop and get cash while I’m waiting for them all to arrive AND I can still buy stuff if I go out and forget my wallet.

However, I couldn’t find any companies that made them for my phone initially and had to buy a normal case—this is me, it has to have a protective case of some sort because otherwise, I’ll smash it. Although even with the protective case I smashed the phone-before-last on day two.

The case it has is great but I have to take it off to plug in a USB stick to download my photos, and as I’m doing the eyebombing book at the moment, I need to keep moving eyebomb pictures from my phone to my computer so, as you can imagine, this has become a sizeable point of pain. I have google drive but anyone who’s ever tried to download anything more than one photo at a time from Google Drive will know a) what a palaver it is and b) that when it compresses the photos into a zip file it leaves three quarters of them out. Massive, MASSIVE ball ache. The USB storage stick is way easier, even if you have to keep taking the phone out of its ruddy bastard case each time. That’s how eager Google is to ensure you don’t bother and pay for extra storage. Money grubbing bastards.

Sorry, where was I? Ah yes.

Having ordered the case, it arrived two weeks later from China and I discovered I’d inadvertently ordered one to fit a Pixel PRO rather than a plain pixel. When I put ‘custom wallet case for google pixel 6’ into a search engine, I have to be very careful that I check the results are not for a Pixel 6 Pro, which is bigger, because no matter what I do, it lumps them all together. I also get annoyingly irrelevant ‘sponsored’ results from companies who don’t make a custom wallet case for a pixel at all. I know I had the right one initially but the internet dropped, I had to reload the page and I didn’t realise it had defaulted back to pixel 6 PRO again. Bastards. That said, it was so rubbish that when it arrived I was almost glad it didn’t fit.

Needless to say, only one other site offering a Pixel 6 (not pro) wallet case popped up on my search results, but apparently they’d changed some vital parameter to ‘custom’ that made BT parental controls ban them. Or perhaps it was because they’re called hairy worm, phnark. Uh yeh … I guess it could be that. Sometime, long ago, in the dim, dark, distant past, we put parental controls on our BT internet access because … you know … McMini.

However, that was eight years ago. We are out of contract and neither of us knows our BT password so we can’t change it. I tried to get this back off BT but was unable to because it was confidential information. So confidential that once it’s been lost, they can’t even tell the actual account holder what their own password is. Likewise, if they spell your name wrong, they can’t change it. I might be able to tone down parental controls via the wi-fi router and I will probably try at some point in the far future, when I’ve nothing better to do.

Alternatively, it might be that only McOther can do it because he’s the account holder and being his mere wife means I’m not secure enough. I did have a secondary account and password which I could do this stuff with but those no longer work, probably because I haven’t used my BT email address, ever.

As far as the account goes, I think there has to be one default email address but we can’t get in because … password … and they can’t send it to us because we can’t get in to read the email. Anyway, they’ve spelled our surname Maguire, the ignorant tossers, so they can fuck off.

Hmm. Sorry. Not ranty or anything today am I? I’m just in a grump because my son has very generously shared his cold with me. Back to my long and rambling story. I just know you’re on the edge of your seat. Mwahahargh!

Luckily, I have data on my phone so I just used that to bypass BT’s draconian system by using my data and my phone, instead. I did try to report it as an error but obviously I needed to know my account name and password for that. Considering I uploaded the artwork, positioned it and chose the text colour using my phone I am actually quite chuffed. See picture attached.

Mmm … K’Barthan swag.

Nothing much else has happened this week other than my opening what, I suspect, is going to be the most gargantuan can of worms. I asked about getting Mum a care assessment for a continuing care grant; mainly because one of her carers’ grandfather had been given it and she told me that, in her professional opinion, he was no more in need of help than Mum. Her mother, who is also on the care team, agreed. I asked what they did, and apparently another family member had contacted an agency who’d done it for them.

Armed with this information, I rang the agency in question but they told me that if Mum is able to speak she isn’t bad enough. The chap there seemed to think that non-verbal was a key factor and told me to come back when she reaches the pureed food stage. I’m a bit confused by that because if she needs help to stand, go to the loo, wash, dress, cook, clean and can’t even use the phone or turn the telly on by herself then surely that’s 24 hour care.  To be doubly sure, I rang the Admiral nurses helpline. Sadly they don’t cover where Mum lives so they won’t be able to help with the process but they were able to advise me and said that yes, Mum definitely had needs that made her eligible for Continuing Care.  Next, I got through to social care at the council who thought I should contact her Doctor. I guess what I really need to find is the local social services number for her and get a social worker on her case. I’m not 100% sure how that’s done, as with Dad I seem to remember it happening automatically. I’ll have to look up his notes and see if I have a number for them from then.

Essentially, Mum needs a care assessment first from the right team. Apparently you can call and ask for one of those any time. Then the results of that are scrutinised closely and financial help awarded … or not. The trouble is, nothing says who you call to get this initial care assessment sorted.  There are parameters and a procedure, but to the outsider looking in the vaguaries of the system are very difficult to understand, at best and at worst, it comes over as deliberately opaque, whimsical and arcane … Mum ticks most things on the list but, as yet, I’ve found no concrete information as to where the starting point of the system is. As a result, I’m not sure who to contact to have the care assessment done. It’s a NHS team, who does the assessment for the actual application, but I have no clue if we need a ‘normal’ assessment first from social services. I’m guessing we do, although I’ve found a thing that says a district nurse can arrange this, too so I might see if I can get the carers to liaise with them.

There are two agencies who will apply for NHS continuing care on behalf of people, and a law firm with the most ridiculous name on earth—they’re probably really good but the name screams cold-calling ambulance chasers. The only one of these august bodies that quoted a price for their work charged £2,500 and some suggest as much as £6,500 depending on what they have to do. I will have to think about whether it’s worth that. No, it’s definitely worth it, for my sanity, to pay someone else to do it for me because this will be a grim project to try and undertake on my own and, like all the Mum stuff, is a perfect storm of everything at which I am shit.

In the meantime, I’ve started filling out the form on the website of the other agency. I’ve already stalled at how much Mum has spent on her care … well … you know … apart from, ‘everything’ but some of that was the day-to-day costs of running the house. She has a state pension so there’s that on top, as well, though so theory, it’s actually a bit more than everything.  Everything with brass knobs on? I dunno.

What I don’t understand is this; while I appreciate that they aim to make it hard for people gaming the system, it would be quite nice to set it up so the people who needed this particular part of the system would have some blind clue as to what, exactly makes them eligible and how it works. There are lots of really clear accounts that explain what will happen when you are already in the system and what the steps of the evaluation are. But how to start the process? Absolutely fuck all.

Carers looking after a sick relative who are seeking continuing care for them, or people who are sick themselves and need continuing care … they’re not exactly endowed with an abundance of energy for administriviatitive shit because they have a craptonne on their plate and are already nearly broken. I should imagine many of them will never get money to help with care, money to which they are entitled, because they are too fucking ill and their relatives too fucking frazzled and burned out to even begin to work out how to fucking apply.

Fuckity fucking fuck! Preparing the guest room for Mr Cockup then, even, also as we speak.

Ho hum. Onwards and upwards.

Astonishingly cheap ebook and audiobook alert …

Yes. Spoil yourself with your good taste (Ambassador) and a wonderful free book. Mmm hmm. If you are looking for a fun novella—to relieve the considerable tedium you may be experiencing after reading this blog post, for example—or if you’d like to listen to an audio book in the car, or at work, or on the commute and you are just fresh out of ideas for fabulous newness … well, you can fix all those things by grabbing a free book.

This book.

Small Beginnings, K’Barthan Extras, Hamgeean Misfit: No 1.

It’s free to download in ebook format from most of the major retailers (except when Amazon is dicking with me) while two and a half hours of glorious K’Barthan audiobook deliciousness is a mere 99p or c from Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Spotify, Apple and Chirp (if you’re in the States). It’s also free to download from my web store.

If you think that sounds interesting and would like to take a look, just go here.

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Tagged as an author with children, author blog, dementia, full time mum writing, I fucked this up so you don't have to, istuffedthisupsoyoudon’thaveto, M T M Makes a complete tit of herself, M T McGuire, off topic, trying to be a writer, women in sci-fi, women writers, writers

26 Feb 2023 · 7:45 pm

Discombobulation … is the name of the game

Yes, you find me all arse-about-face this week. Well that’s the default state, I grant you, but in this particular instance I’m probably a bit more arse-about-face than usual. Yeh. I know. Impressive. Even for me.

One of the difficulties I’ve experienced recently with my blog is that there’s been so much to write about I haven’t really known where to start, so then I’ve just gone a bit droopy and given up on it.

The past few weeks have been rough.

On the Mum front, nothing much seems to be happening about getting her an official diagnosis for dementia and we are reaching the stage where she does need one. It’s a pain to have to keep chasing her doctor and getting absolutely nothing back. He’s normally excellent so I don’t know what’s happened but I think I’ll have to book a call next week and get to the bottom of what’s going on. If he can’t refer her to the NHS memory people for some reason then presumably I’ll have to try and get a diagnosis done privately. It will cost money but the expensive bit is the brain scan which has already been done in hospital and should be with her NHS record.

On the upside, having done my tax return which showed I owed tax, and having paid said tax, it now turns out I don’t so they’re going to give it back to me. On the downside, some numb nuts reversed into me at bloody Tesco’s filling station … why is that place always trouble? Turned out he wasn’t insured because he was driving his friend’s car and didn’t want his friend to know. I explained about fibreglass and the cost of repairs and he looked at the bill and decided he couldn’t pay so I reported it to my insurance company. Apparently they’ve agreed that the repair can be done by the bunch who always look after my car. Unfortunately they’ve told Enterprise rent a car that, and they’ve rung the fellow who will be fixing the damage and have left a message that he must call but when he does all they get is a message telling them that all their operators are busy and to ~~piss off~~ call back at another time.

Incidentally, since every single call centre has been experiencing ‘an unusually high demand’ since covid, I’d be tempted to say that the level of demand has been like this for three years and therefore it isn’t unusually high; it’s simply a case that they sacked everyone after covid and have decided they’ll make more money if they sacrifice any customer service principles they had and run on a shoe-string staff. But I digress.

As the mechanic apologetically explained to me, after making five attempts, there are only so many times you can call. So now I have to ring my insurers between 10.30 and 4.30 (nice hours if you can get them) and they’ll put me through ‘because they’re more likely to answer’ and get the bloody job number myself. FFS.

The next week, going to Mum’s because I’m so fucking intelligent, I was a bit upset by seeing a rolled horse box and car on the motorway and the green we’ve-just-shot-this-horse screens. Late for Mum’s and in a dither I reversed my car into a flint wall, fucking the other end of it although—thank the lord for small mercies—the wall was unscathed. Since it was the random wall of someone else’s drive that is a Good Thing. Why? Because I can’t claim on my insurance or I’ll lose my no claims bonus and my excess is just shy of £300 so unfortunately the £800 for this one is on me because if I lose the no claims I’ll only be getting about £100 for a claim in real terms and paying the rest in increased premiums and excess. It’s tough being this much of a twat but someone’s got to do it.

Another up and down one, I had planned to see Abba Voyage with a friend this week. She’s one half of a lovely couple who absolutely get me. They also like me as much as I like them and there is a huge amount of mutual respect and ditto with McOther too. McMini also loves them. The chap has had cancer on and off since just before lock down. It’s been a virulent bastard. He’s been playing bash-the-rat with it and we’ve been seeing them in the gaps between bouts of chemo. He’s not had much respite between ending one lot of chemo and it popping up again which is highly unfair.

He faced it with a great deal of courage and liberal dashings of his habitual droll humour. Last time we saw them, at the back end of last year, he was unable to eat all of his dinner round ours and suspected he had another tumour somewhere causing a blockage which would mean more chemo.

Knowing this, we sort of left them to it. McOther and I tend to take a, ‘you know where we are if you need us’ approach to this kind of thing and then give people space. We have a kid and if someone’s immune system is compromised with chemo we’re probably more likely to bring pathogens than most people—although McMini doesn’t get all the colds like some kids, it’s probably me that will bring the bugs in. Typhoid Mary anyone? Oh yes.

Long and the short, friend messaged me on Tuesday to say that he was in the hospice. I was particularly amused that, as a keen Viz reader, he should have ended up in the J Arthur Rank … which is ryhming slang for a wank, snortle. But it is a fab hospice and the original J Arthur left a lot of money for cancer care (I’m not sure if he died of it or someone close to him did, I should probably check). She explained that her other half had talked to her about Saturday and told her she had to go, whatever stage he was at. However, she felt her attendance still might depend slightly on him. I totally got that if he was dying, she would probably want to be holding his hand rather than watching Abba Voyage with me and I assumed, from this, that the odds were, he might be. I said that whatever she needed was fine.

Looking at the map, I realised that the hospice was only about 10 minutes out of my way on the way home from Mum’s so I arranged to pop in and see her the following day, and him if he was up to it. You know how with some people you can be really quite rude and abusive to one another and know it’s a joke. If you don’t you should as it’s an incredibly joyous and liberating thing to be able to insult people ironically because you love them.

These two were like this, with one another but also with us so I also told her that if his sense of humour was still in evidence to tell him that all she and I wanted was to nip down to London for a day to watch Abba and he had to make it all about him!

The next morning she contacted me to say that he had died very peacefully in the early hours of that morning. She must have told him I was coming to see him. I mentioned that to her, but obviously I offered condolences first. Then I cried a great deal, most of the way to Mum’s.

JD, the chap in question, was the absolute best of people. Much like my friend Duncan, he was into cars and was not remotely phased about speaking his mind—well, he was a Yorkshireman—or pricking the bubble of the pompous. He saw the humour in everything, but not to the point of offence, or at the expense of the humanity or pathos. Both he and his Mrs coped with the world using gallows humour, and wit, the way McOther and I do. Presumably that’s why we all got on so well.

He was very intense—but not in a way that was at all wearing—very intelligent and well informed about many things. He had an enquiring mind, so I guess if he was interested in something he needed to know about it. Properly. Among the things were music and cars to name two but history and wine, F1 … he was also a fabulous cook. Oh and he was endurance fit, one of these people who gets up at 6 am and goes for a 50 mile bike ride before breakfast. He was also highly amusing. He had a way of calling everyone by their surnames but in a way that felt rather less formal than using first names would be, although he always called me Sweary, for that is my nickname with that group of friends and they all call me Sweary.

His dry wit made the world a better and kinder place and when the cancer appeared he faced his affliction with so much positivity, pragmatism and courage. It’s clear, from talking to his Mrs, that he never gave up until acceptance was the best path. I will miss him dreadfully but, I’m very aware as I say this, that his wife and his mother (God love her, poor woman) have this way, way worse.

His Mrs is being as brilliant as I’d expect her to be. They were great friends, anyway, and clearly grew together rather than apart as his illness progressed. It can’t be easy though. They’re in their mid 50s. And I mean, as it is, I feel as if someone has turned a light out. There is so little humour in the world right now, so few people with a light touch. So few people who will catch my eye, in a situation where everyone is taking something far too seriously, and I will know they’re laughing inside as well. It feels like the world is being run by clones of Biff from Back To The Future. The Biffs are on the ascendant and those of us who understand the importance of humour to civilised living and discourse are fewer and further between than ever. And lightness and humour are so important. If you can be funny about stuff, you can explore some really scary shit in comparative safety, or at least, in a way you can’t if you are a humourless automaton.

The day after breaking the news, my friend contacted me to say she wanted to go to Abba because he would have wanted that and also that he had left instructions that his life should be celebrated. I said that was OK and did she want me to come and pick her up and drive us down there. She said that yes, if I could, that would be great.

I took a half bottle of champagne and on arrival we drank a toast to him. I think it made us both feel better. Then we had lunch and went to watch Abba Voyage which was very impressive and which I can recommend. It did strike me that some of the words were a bit close to the bone but it was only the second to last song where I thought she looked a bit wobbly and gave her a hug. She hugged me back so I think she may have needed it.

The audience was dancing but I was amused to see that, while they clearly wanted to dance the way they had as teenagers and kids, they were nursing the kind of backs, knees, ankles and collapsed arches that meant the couldn’t quite do it the way the used to. The intent was there though. There was a woman about our age near us who stripped down to her bra like it was some kind of 1990s Ibizan foam party, which we thought was hilarious, if a trifle weird. She came over as insecure and wanting to impress, like a teenager, rather than just being overheated, menopausal and giving no fucks. But what do I know?

When we came to leave we had to walk miles round the houses because West Ham were playing at home and turning out at the same time as us. All the streets had been barricaded so you simply could not leave them. I stopped to take a few photos, including a rainbow. A promise? Maybe.

The shopping centre we’d walked through to get to the Abba Arena was closed off with massive metal shutters like the blast doors out of a nuclear shelter and the streets lined with unhelpful stewards who said we had to go round.

We’re not football folks though, we’re here for Abba and we want to get a coffee. Never mind, that. You have to walk round the outside in the pissing rain with the West Ham peps.

Is the car park open? Are we allowed to go into the car park to get our car?

You have to go round. That way.

Yes. We have twigged. But are we going to be allowed into the car park to get our car?

You must go round.

Yeh, right. Thanks that’s been a great help.

On the upside, they demonstrated, clearly, that Westfield shopping centre could survive the Zombie Apocalypse, which is useful to know.

It was bizarre though.

Luckily, we were able to get into the car park, although not into the shopping centre from street level. But by climbing to the next floor we were able to walk into the shopping centre from there and go with our original plan to grab a cappuccino and an arancini.

When it was time to leave we found that the pay machine in the car park was one of these ones where you put in your number plate and it just tells you how long you’ve been there and presents you with a bill.

Except it didn’t.

It kept presenting us with pictures of wildly inappropriate and unmatching vehicles. The more times I tried to find my car’s numberplate, the more bizarrely wrong the suggestions it offered; enormous munter trucks, saloons, and the odd van. Each time it was kind of going, ‘well, there’s an A in the numberplate on this one, is this your car?’ I’d press ‘no’ because it was a bus/estate car/motorbike etc and it would start again. Finally it suggested a massive van which shared one of the same numbers as my car’s number plate, ‘What about this one?’ it says hopefully.

‘Nah-uh.’ Say I. And so on.

After we’d done about seven of these we were both snorting with laughter because we reckoned it would be just our luck to get trapped in the car park forever, unable to leave. In my head I could just hear JD laughing at our antics. There were many jokes about how us two could get in to the most ridiculous scrapes. McOther calls me The Woman THINGS Happen To and they had a similar gag running themselves. I pressed the help button and was told that we should just drive to the exit and ring them again and they’d charge us then.

Off we went. I managed to tell two lurking motorists that I was leaving, by mistake, but my friend explained to the second one that we’d told the other we were going first and so we avoided precipitating a hand bags at sundown situation over our parking spot. Phew.

When we reached the exit, I discovered that the help button was about 3 feet above the roof of my car. I dunno, maybe there were some exits for buses or something and I’d inadvertently picked one of those, but they’d all seemed to be the same. Then again, there were about 60,000 West Ham fans making their way home and most of them seemed to be parked in that car park so maybe it was just that there were cars over the top of the writing on the ground and I’d not seen the bus label on this one.

On the up side, there was a guy there and I explained what had happened and asked him to help. He pressed the button for me, not quite what I was expecting, I’d assumed he’d be able to work the machine. Never mind, it was a start. The sound of a distant phone ringing drifted down from above me as the help button attempted to make the connection. It went on for a while. Some of the West Ham fans behind us tooted.

‘I’m going to let you go,’ said the man and proceeded to raise the barrier just as a tinny voice 3 feet above my head said, ‘Hello?’

I’m afraid I didn’t reply. Instead, I thanked the man, hoofed it out of the car park and headed for home. As I drove, my friend had to ring some folks to explain when her husband’s funeral was. I listened as she spoke a cross between Italian and dialect to a cousin in Sicily. And tried to shut up Margaret (the sat nav on my phone) who seemed to be shouting orders on full volume. (It’s called Margaret because it sounds like Mrs Thatcher.)

As we got to the bottom of the M11 she (my friend, not Margaret, the sat-nav, obviously) was saying, ‘Caio, Caio, Ciao …’ exactly the same way Brits say, ‘bye’ successive times, really quickly, when ending a call. But then the person on the other end clearly asked her something and they started talking again and went on for another ten minutes.

This got me chuckling because I could imagine her husband laughing at this so vividly it was almost like he was in the car with us and I could hear it. And I immediately remembered a conversation the four of us had had with him and McOther ripping the piss out of myself and her over our inability to say goodbye quickly. McOther complained how, when I was leaving my parents, we’d suddenly start another conversation in the doorway and talk for another twenty minutes in the cold instead of getting into the car, at which point JD had cited examples of similar behaviour from her while visiting the rellies in Italy.

Once her call was done, we put on my Abba Gold CD and did some hard core singing as we drove up the motorway. I managed to get cramp in my shin on the home straight going to her house, which was interesting and made us laugh some more. It did go the minute I got out and went inside to say a quick hello to JD’s mum and have a wee. Then it was home for a well earned spag bol. I’d done 23,000 steps and an hour and a half of dancing so I had no qualms about eating a generous portion!

So yeh … all in all … a bittersweet few weeks. I haven’t written anything, and I can’t, but that’s OK.

On a vaguely book related note …

Graphic book cover with two old ladies silhouetted against a darkened street If you have the remotest interest in any of my books, I have a page on my site where I list all the stuff that’s reduced or free so you can try it out and see if you like it. If you think that sounds interesting (oh yes you DO think it sounds interesting) then click on this link: https://www.hamgee.co.uk/cmot3

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Tagged as death, I fucked this up so you don't have to, istuffedthisupsoyoudon’thaveto, M T McGuire, M T McGuire audiobooks, Mary Fails at Modern Life, off topic, women in sci-fi

1 Oct 2022 · 12:01 pm

Enjoy yourself …

It sounded as if the Dalek operator inside was laughing as I did this.

OK, it’s a bit of a long one this week because woah! Norcon! What a gas! And I want to give you the low down. Yes, you will remember—if you wade through my outpourings regularly—that last week, through the wonders of modern technology, I was talking to you, in my absence, from Norcon where I was flogging books. Now I’m going to tell you all about it. Oh yes I am.

Why? Because it was brilliant! That’s why, one week on, I still haven’t quite returned to earth.

During the summer, I did St Albans Comicon with some author friends and we had great fun even though it was hot enough to cook meringues by just leaving them outside, and even hotter inside.

This time it was not hot, or at least not inside. I dunno about outside because I didn’t go out there during the day. Hang on, I’ve gone off on a tangent there. Right, yes, back on track now, the same three of us were sharing two tables, plus another lovely East Anglian author who we met at St Albans Comicon: Mark (Book of Souls Saga) Ashby. So half a table each, which worked out just peachy. A few feet round the corner was A E Warren (Tomorrow’s Ancestors Series) another East Anglian author who is a member of the author zoom group of which we are all part.

Norcon bills itself as the most friendly convention and it certainly lived up to its name. The atmosphere was very relaxed which was lucky because we had to get up at insane o’clock in the morning to get there and I am not at my best before seven a.m. Not even after coffee. Julia Blake (Erinsmore, The Forest, Black Ice and many more) and I were sharing a car; her car on day one, my car—which had arrived back from lengthy and convoluted (not to mention expensive) repairs the Friday before—on day two. Because the loading doors closed at 8.30 and we weren’t sure where we were going we decided to leave at six a.m.

As you know people, I have a light dash of IBS. What this means it that certain THINGS have to happen before I leave the house. Thank the heavens above, my body was in a cooperative mood that morning and I was ready for pick up at six. But to achieve that, I still had to be up by FIVE am. Gads! We decided that we would do cosplay too so we were all going to be dressed to match the characters or genre of our books.

Having scratched my head about the number of books I should bring, I decided in the end that I should assume I’d sell double what I sold in one day at St Albans over the two days … but then I got cold feet and in an act of hopeless optimism, I packed all the books into two huge boxes.

‘Blimey! How many books have you brought with you?’ Julia asked me as I heaved them all into her car.

‘Yes!’ I replied.

Us and our stalls

There was a small hiccup was that a large part of the A11 is down to one lane and Google chose to direct us the quickest way which involved Julia navigating her brand new car down single track roads. But something else happened to Google, or maybe I touched the screen of my phone with an unwitting fingertip, but it took us to someone’s house on Church Street, in a small village about ten miles short of our expected destination; the Norfolk Showground.

Oookaaaay …

Luckily, we got there unscathed, although I felt horrendously guilty for putting my friend through the crap in her BRAND NEW CAR (yeek!) or at least, for letting my phone do it.

Paul McGahn, Nigel Planer and Chris Barrie sitting at sci fi convention signing tables

Paul McGann, Nigel Planer and Chris Barrie with members of Norcon Crew

We set out our stalls and I discovered that we were opposite the signing tables — I hadn’t realised this but the others had cunningly planned it because that way we might have a captive audience of people queuing for signings to pitch our books to. The three opposite us were Paul McGann, who was the radio and film Dr Who, Nigel Planer who is the voice of the first 24 (I think it’s 24) Terry Pratchett audiobooks but, more importantly, was Neil in a comedy show called The Young Ones which my friend Kirsty and I watched pretty much on loop as teenagers. Then there was Chris Barrie, who is Rimmer in Red Dwarf. Julian Glover was down at the end somewhere and there were two more folks, stars from StarTrek the New Generation and another from StarWars, I think, in between, but the three opposite us were the ones I genuinely admire; being, as I am, a monster fan of Dr Who, Red Dwarf and The Young Ones.

Chris (Arnold Rimmer) Barrie

The stars were sitting with a Norcon team member each and in most cases they were chatting away and it all seemed very relaxed. Meanwhile we were doing the same thing our side.

As I was banging on about something in the voice of Dr Evil to my neighbouring author—Rachel Churcher (Battleground Series)—and primping and reprimping the books on my stall, I was aware of someone tall in a dark jacket reading the blurbs I’d pinned to the front of the table cloth and taking a picture of me. I looked up and the only person in a dark jacket in our neck of the woods was Nigel Planer, who was wandering back to his table.

‘Did he just …?’ I asked Rachel.

‘Take a photo of you? Yes,’ she replied.

‘Woah. That’s cool.’

So we had a quick squee moment and told the others and then got on with selling our books, photographing each other looking excited and holding books or arsing about, flaunting our costumes—or in my case, trying to prove my books were amusing by Being Funny at people—and generally Being Authors … er hem … probably.

During the gaps in traffic we looked at people’s costumes and took photos which the organised ones shared to instagram and Facebook but I just whatsapped them to the McOthers at home, or we watched the martial arts bunch behind us doing light sabre training with legions of pint-sized Jedi and Sith or photographed passing Daleks, because who’s going to pass up an opportunity to do that?

Meanwhile the signing tables were busy but in the gaps, Mr Planer appeared to be doing exactly the same thing as we were (sensible chap) wandering about with his phone taking pictures and clearly living his best life and enjoying at all. He kept stopping to look at my stall, and me, presumably trying to work out who on God’s green earth I was supposed to be. He was wearing an affable smile or an expression of intelligent enquiry (or both) for most of the time, but above all when he wandered past us, he appeared to be genuinely intrigued by the books I was selling. Which was a bit of a thing. And which threw me completely.

As the day wore on, all the others noticed and they kept teasing me that if Nigel Planer was looking at my stuff, I should go over and sell a book to him. I was just wondering if I could swing that and deciding that no, I very much could not, when I looked up and there he was, standing in front of the stall, like an actual … um … customer.

Shit.

‘Hello,’ I said, although, to be honest, it might have come out as a bit of a squeak.

I think he asked if my books were humorous sci fi to which I said yes and then, before I could stop myself, I sort of blew it. My brain went into overdrive.

You can’t sell him a book! Some of it told me. You have to give him the book.

I know but what if he insists on paying? The rest of me asked it. I can’t take his money. It’s really bad form.

Use a short. Then he’ll only have to pay £3 if he insists and you can accept his money without looking like a charlatan taking advantage.

And so it was that before I could stop myself, while the larger part of my brain was still attempting to compute, I grabbed the nearest short, Close Enough and I blurted.

‘Can I give you a book? Seriously, I would be honoured to, if you wanted one.’

Noooo! What was I doing? Where was the calm sensible, let’s chat about the books, let’s allow the customer to ask me the questions and choose the one they want selling policy that I try, and fail, to pursue with everyone who approaches my stall? Nowhere, that’s where. There’d been some kind of brain coup and sensible, mature Mary was now gagged and tied up in the corner. Gibbering fan girl was firmly at the wheel.

Worse, that was the wrong book! I’d picked a short, which he would be least likely to enjoy, because it would drop him in the middle of everything with minimal world building. But it would have to be a short because they were the cheapest. Except that if it does have to be a short Nothing To See Here is the one to throw them in with. And I didn’t even fucking ask him which one he wanted, poor sod! And if I was going to do that why, in heaven, didn’t I just sell him Escape From B-Movie Hell at cost, since that’s the one which eases the uninitiated into my style gently and I could have charged him a fiver for that without looking like I was grovelling but it would still not be rudely expensive.

Head desk.

On the other hand, he’d seen and heard me selling books all day so he probably had some idea what he was in for. And I didn’t dribble or start quoting vast tracts of The Young Ones at him and my Traffic Warden Clemency Begging Gland didn’t pump two gallons of spit into his face while I was talking to him either, so that was a bonus. Also, it wasn’t nearly as embarrassing as the time I met Dudley Moore (I die a little inside every time I remember that) which, I suppose, was a small win. I guess I was just a bit … starstruck though.

Rolls eyes.

Encore de head desk.

And the others chimed in and I think Julia gave him a book because … share the love!

He did insist on paying and I took his three quid. I also devalued his copy by signing it for him.

Nigel, thank you for being Neil (and Nigel) all the best … I wrote, drew him a picture of a snurd and signed it. In sharpie. God in heaven.

Then he told us he’d written a book which he’s crowd funded on Unbound and that it’s humorous sci fi, a time travel story. So we chatted about that and he had a flyer so I asked if I could keep it and Rachel (Battleground Series) asked for one, too, and he went back and got one for her, as well. Then, clutching mine and Julia(Black Ice, Erinsmore, The Forest and many more …)’s books, our hapless victim returned to his station. He left us bobbing up and down like overexcited pontipines.

Hmm, maybe not so hapless, then, since I’ve bought his book; the deluxe hardback version, signed by the author with my name printed in the back so I think he might have had the last laugh. Then again, he was so friendly and generally affable that how could I not? And it’s comedic sci fi and this is me so that I’ll buy the book is pretty much a given really.

I also apologised to him for being a bit starstruck on twitter and sent him a picture of Extra Special Deadpool man (I’ll come to that) and told him I’d bought the book. He dutifully liked the picture said he hoped I enjoy it.

Back to Norcon.

A bit later on, I was suffering with raging guilt over 1, taking money off actual Nigel Planer for my crappy book and, 2, giving him a book he’d probably loathe so I thought I’d better go and buy a photo. Then Amy (AE Warren; Tomorrow’s Ancestors Series) said I should try and get a selfie except there was a sign over each person saying what they’d do and how much for and Mr P’s said no selfies. Amy reckoned he was quite louche about that though and assured me that she’d seen him doing selfies with other people.

So I took my courage in both hands, waited for a quiet moment and went over to him.

‘Since you’ve been kind enough to buy my book, the least I should do is return the compliment. How much would you charge me for a selfie?’ I asked him, pretending that I was either terribly myopic or too stupid to have read the sign. Well, I wear spectacles and he’d already spoken to my by this time so I reckoned I could swing it.

‘I’m not really supposed to do them but I doubt anyone will find out if we go over there,’ he said cheerfully, waving his hand in the general direction of my book stall opposite.

‘Oh! Thank you, very much,’ I said.

He wandered over and positioned himself in front of the banner but also a bit to the side, you know, so people looking at the photo could read it. I trotted over in his wake.

‘There we are!’ he said as I stood beside him. ‘You can just pretend you are taking a photograph of something over there,’ he told me, pointing in the general direction of Chris Barrie. There was definitely a slightly gleeful vibe coming from him at this point, as if he was feeling the joy of doing some small piece of rebellion that’s Naughty and that he Wasn’t Meant To. That, of course, is something I can always get on board with. I was just about to start a light hearted sort of, ‘Oh look at that over there!’ in a suitably wooden comedy voice and hold up my phone when, bless her, up popped Rachel.

‘Shall I take the photo?’ she asked.

Brilliant. So I handed her the phone and he put his arm round me and we grinned at the camera. Rachel wisely took two photos, both of which are fabulous; like, really decent shots both of him and me, which might be natural for him but trust me, for me, it’s something approaching a miracle.

Woah.

What was lovely was that it came over as totally genuine interest in another professional, which from one so stratospherically elevated from us made all four of us feel good. Mwahahahargh! I guess that’s the power of fame but it’s amazing how such a simple kindness from someone who has that power can make another person’s day. If I ever make it off the bottom, I hope that I, too, will show the same generosity of spirit and encouragement to the people coming up behind me.

Where could I go from there? Well, on the Sunday, things did feel a bit flat at first but then I looked at the costumes and on the up side, I did get a belly laugh out of Chris Barrie by asking him, in the voice of the Toaster from Red Dwarf whether he wanted some toast. And obviously, I went and shook hands with Paul McGann as well because … you know. He’s The Doctor. And Terry Malloy, who played Davros quite a lot in Dr Who (one of my favourite villains) at a time when I avidly watched the programme every Saturday night.

Another delight was watching the Dalek operators. There was an impressive selection of Daleks; from the 1960s and 70s ones I remembered as a kid, to the copper-coloured David Tennant era ones. They were fenced off in an area close to us. The fellow in charge had brought his parents, who were in their 80s and absolutely sweet and would sit in deck chairs each day happily watching the action, or wander the hall, hand-in-hand, looking at all the other exhibits.

And then we heard the martial arts folks giggling and saying that ‘he’ was here so we asked them who ‘he’ was and they said,

‘Oh you’ll know.’

Sure enough, when this gentleman turned up I suspect we did. Yes. Dead pool. With a euphonium. Mwahahahargh!

Awesome.

He followed the people in particularly excellent costumes about playing their themes or the theme from their film. I asked him if his instrument was heavy and he told me that yes, it’s hard on the core strength. Apparently he has to wear a back brace to help with that.

I particularly like the way he’s wearing the trumpet like a side arm. I didn’t see him play it but I should imagine it would be too difficult to get to when the euphonium is in position and you’d need some extra arms to hold the euphonium while you used your main set of arms to play the trumpet.

On a final note, it was one of the safest spaces I’ve seen for a while. There’s a whole other level to cosplay. Nobody cares if you’re 20 stones and want to dress as Wonder Woman, nobody cares if you’re a he, a she, a they or a ze. Nobody cares if you’re a biological bloke but you feel more comfortable, and more yourself, in a dress. I should imagine there are a lot of folks who might be on the end of some serious prejudice in Real Life, who can come to a con and be who they really are. Not only be who they are but be applauded for it. I’d imagine that’s pretty freeing. I loved how open and accepting it was.

Yeh.

It was golden. All of it.

How many books did I sell?

Hardly any. In fact, sales were pretty dismal. I sold exactly half the number of books I sold at St Albans in one day, over two days at Norcon.

But fuck me! I sold one of them to Nigel Planer! Mwahahahrgh!

Will he read it? Who knows, but that’s not the point. He bought one. And I hope I haven’t got him into trouble posting the selfie. Sorry, Nigel, if I have and you’re reading this*.

* Well, you never know right?

And I managed to get a guffaw out of Chris Barrie. In fact lots of people actually laughed at my crap jokes, which made my day. Both days; because the principal aim when I do these things is to meet people, be funny at them so they think my books must be funny too and buy one, oh and have a gas, because then the books sell themselves. And anyway, without laughter what do you have? Well … no fun, that’s for certain.

I came home feeling the same way I used to after a really good gig in my very, very brief flirtation with stand-up. To be honest, I was so high I still haven’t quite come down.

Not a commercial success then, but will I go back next year? You bet your arse I will.

And finally … last chance to grab 12 hours of audiophonic joy for 99p (or 99c)

Yes. If you like cheap audio books, Few Are Chosen is on sale until Monday. After that the price goes up again.

As always, I’m cutting my own throat here.

It’s 99c on Apple, Kobo and my own website. For anyone in the States, it’s also 99c on Barnes & Noble and Chirp (which is USA and Canada).

If you want to grab it while it’s mega cheap you can find store links and a bit more info here

Oh and one more thing …

Here’s a little bit of Nigel Planer in action as Neil …

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Tagged as book marketing, book sales, cheap quality books, cosplay, Events, Events and signings, humour, I fucked this up so you don't have to, istuffedthisupsoyoudon’thaveto, K’barthan audio, M T M Makes a complete tit of herself, mtmcguire, norcon, quality books cheap, The Pan of Hamgee, women in sci-fi

24 Sep 2022 · 12:12 pm

Compassion … so fucking underrated

A picture of the queen This week I was going to write about The Queen, I may not have time to do it justice because I am going to have to write today’s blog post yesterday and speak to you from the past. That means I only have half an hour or so before I’m due to take McMini off to a club. Then, since he’s already eaten I have to come home and eat, then shower and then McOther will be picking him up. Tomorrow, or at least, today as you read this—Crikey! This is complicated isn’t it?—I’m off at 6.30 am to Norcon; and on Sunday too.

The Queen was a reluctant monarch. She prayed that she’d have a brother so she didn’t have to be queen—at that time, a boy took precedence over a girl even if he was younger. She also prayed that her father wouldn’t have to be king because she understood, correctly, that it would do for him in the end. Then she went on to do this thing she didn’t want to do for 70 years. That’s … seriously impressive.

Managing my parents’ finances and watching them gradually losing their sanity is probably a perfect storm of everything at which I am shit. Seriously, if God had set out to give me everything I find difficult he couldn’t have done a better job. It’s all maths and being organised and remembering to do staff, remembering to phone at certain times, sitting for hours on hold, patience, and numbers; a side of my personality which is seriously lacking and an aspect of my intelligence that is entirely absent. If my other brain was like my numbers brain, I’d be living in sheltered accomodation for people with learning difficulties. I’m great in a crisis and so naturally I am given a long-term millstone; a grinding expanse of interminable twilight grey that stretches as far as I can see. I’m one for the sprint, so I have been given the marathon. I can’t bear watching people suffer and so I must. For years.

Thanks for that, God. Thanks a fucking bunch.

Then, of course, I look at The Queen who stuck at it for 70 years, and I’m complaining about seven. Maybe I should rethink my weapons-grade whining levels then. Although not here, because, clearly that’s what this is for. I watched all of the State Funeral, and I enjoyed it too. Oh I know all the miserable republicans will be saying that the money shouldn’t have been spent on the funeral but frankly, I would consider a national event like that more valuable than the pathetic drop in the ocean of public funds the money it cost would entail. Clearly, I lack the miserable protestant fun-sapping outlook to think The Moral Way. President Johnson? In his dreams but thankfully, not our reality. It’s worth the expense for that, alone. I believe it’s actually quite important to have someone in power who doesn’t want to be there. King George VI was a reluctant monarch, Queen Elizabeth II was a reluctant monarch and I suspect Charles III is equally reluctant.

Good.

Sorry Chas but at the same time, I feel your pain.

I suppose it’s hard to see past the luxury but to me, guilded or not, a cage is still a cage. I wouldn’t fancy it myself. Oh yeh, money makes things easier, C.F. my present predicament dealing with the whole Mum Thing, and money can contribute to happiness, but it doesn’t make you happy on its own. Something inside you has to do that.

Having lived in a very small community where everyone knew who I was, even though I didn’t know them, and where everyone felt as if they knew me, and treated me like a long lost friend (lovely in many respects but sometimes difficult) I can imagine what being Royal is like. I lived in a place where everyone expected me to know them the way they felt they knew me, even if we hadn’t actually met before (still touching but also extremely scary) I can tell you that, even from direct experience in a very, very small arena, this kind of notoriety is significantly less fun than people think. If there was no escape? Ugh.

Royals have lots of stuff but only two weeks a year in which to enjoy it. As non royals, the rest of us Brits get four. It’s easy to forget that people with money, or kept by the state, are still human beings like us at the bottom of it all.

Personally, I feel that the debate about costs is disingenuous; a blind to cover the real issue, which is that some nod to a sense of social justice among those in Parliament would be very helpful right now and seems to be distinctly lacking.

Yes. In all walks of life it seems we are still raging at the most vulnerable in pissy, small-minded anger and egging our government on to even greater heights of petty vindictiveness towards the have nots, while it does the metaphorical equivalent of trying to chisel off a fifty pence that’s been superglued to the pavement as a joke while they ignore the huge suitcase of money behind them in the form of corporate tax ~~dodging~~ efficiency. You know, the stuff over and above the 1% companies like Google and Starbucks pay that they’re supposed to be paying.

Also, excuse me but why the fuck are they using my tax money to cap fuel payments? The fuel companies are posting record profits while the vulnerable and poor are choosing between eating or heating. Who should be paying for this crisis? I’d humbly suggest the fuel and energy companies whose corporate greed caused it.

Here’s another example; supermarket petrol. Supermarkets use your loyalty card and credit card transactions as anonymous data to track which products sell best where. They give people a rating based on income, A through to C and possibly D, I don’t recall (it’s a while since I’ve done this kind of marketing). Then they split each group into numbered bands, A1 the richest, A2 less rich, A3 still loaded but not as rich, B1 well-off professionals, etc through to C3 … possibly D3 I have neither the time nor the inclination to look it up for this, a very generalist passing point.

The supermarkets use this information to look at who buys what, where and then provide more of those products in the places where they sell withdrawing unsuitable products for the market demographic in that particular place. There’s no point having shelves groaning with caviar and truffles in a place where most people take home about £20k a year. They can’t afford it.

However, they also use this information to set prices. In areas where they perceive the population as less well off, they will sell the same staple, petrol for example, at a lower price than they will in another area where the population contains a higher number of B and A level purchasers who can afford to pay more.

This is how petrol costs more at Tesco’s in Bury St Edmunds—£1.69 a litre as I write this—than BP petrol does at my Mum’s in Sussex—£1.67 a litre. It’s also why Tesco’s charges £1.59 a litre for its petrol 15 minutes down the A14 in Newmarket. More C-level purchasers in Newmarket Tesco’s, clearly, or perhaps there’s a local garage round there that they’re trying to drive out of business.

Yes, I suppose it depends how you look at this. A Bury resident, might see them as pitiless, profiteering bastards hiking up prices in specific areas, where a Newmarket resident might seen them as kindly benevolent people cutting the prices in an area where people can afford less. They might see it as folks of my ilk, in Bury, who the database classes as better off subsidising those less fortunate than ourselves. If only that’s what it was but I’m afraid it’s a simple case of their being profiteering bastards. They’re not going to sell anything for less than the biggest margin possible and where they can, they’ll carve out an even bigger one … like the energy companies and every other company that gets so big it loses sight of it’s actual customers, the point of its existance, in its bid to grow even bigger, lock people’s spending in with it and no-one else, serve shareholders a nice fat dividend etc.

Frankly, the older I get, the more of a raving pinko leftie I become. I cannot believe we are going to have a recession caused by the corporate greed of our energy providers. There might be a fuel crisis, I dunno, but they don’t seem to have had much trouble providing power and fuel so far. Any shortages have been about logistics rather than scarecity; people panic buying and the stores running out.

How I wish we could re-nationalise the whole bloody lot. Properly. Sure, keep the government at arm’s length and run it as a business but as a not-for-profit or simply a company that is accountable to it’s customers first—the nation in this case—rather than its board or its shareholders.

Maybe it’s just the way I’m feeling at the moment but I’m angry and bitter and everything feels grey.

Indeed, I had a major melt down at the boys the other morning before leaving for Sussex to see Mum in hospital. This was partly because the vertigo was truly appalling. The worst thing was that I woke up feeling fine, but then, as I raised the glass to finish the rest of a pint of water, it suddenly kicked in. The boys laughed and I just lost it completely. I nearly cried as I ranted at them. Not about the vertigo, but just about how I just couldn’t keep a lid on my grief, and how awful I felt about having to hurt my lovely Mum and make her miserable because of the institutional prejudice the State, and the NHS, displays against people with dementia. Because we are going to run out of money. And we will have to sell the house for her care. And every time I think about it my stomach ties itself into a veritable Gordian knot which no amount of breathing exercises and sundry attempts to relax will undo. I think I got so melodramatic that I actually said I wanted to die, and right there, in the moment, I probably almost did. Jeez it’s a fucking hard row looking after dementia people and the NHS and government seem to go out of their way to make it as hard as possible.

Putting the vertigo on top of that was the last straw, I guess. It was a right royal pain in the arse on a Wednesday, too. I was so giddy that accelerating was giving me the spins. I have perked up a great deal since then. But seriously, why no compassion? Why no mercy. Why make it as hard as possible for people to endure one of the most horrific illnesses out there. Oh yeh, because it takes a long time and so it’s expensive. Seriously though, dementia care in the UK needs an overhaul. Fast. And something approaching compassion or empathy in our lords and masters would be a good place to start.

So what is compassion? Well I saw some in hospital the other day; the most gloriously surreal moment but also lovely. An example of someone with dementia being treated, not as a thing, but as a debilitated human, who was worth something. Treated with understanding, compassion and kindness.

While I was sitting with Mum she told me she needed a poo, which involves several staff and a bed pan so I went and got the nurse who told me I should make a sharp exit and sit in the waiting area. There was a little old dear there, who’d been there for some time. She was very thin, with straggly hair and she was cradling a handbag in her lap. I had clocked that she might have dementia because of the handbag and the fact there was often a nurse or carer with her. I sat down and all was quiet for a while until she spoke.

‘You’d better watch your bag round here,’ she warned me.

‘Oh. Thanks. Right. Yes, I will,’ I replied, lifting my bag from the floor and putting it on my lap the same way she had hers. We sat in silence for a moment or two and then she said.

‘Has my friend gone home?’

I guessed she might be making sense of her situation by connecting it with a comparable experience from her past, which is what people with dementia are doing when they have those back-in-time moments apparently. It’s important to say the right thing so they are guided towards a make-sense-of-this memory moment where they are reassured rather than agitated so I answered with a certain amount of caution,

‘I’m very sorry but I don’t know.’

‘Oh. Only she said to wait for her but I think she’s gone without me.’

‘Oh. That’s a shame if she has,’ I said still treading water a bit, ‘I haven’t been here before, though so I wouldn’t know for certain.’

‘She was making up to some bloke, I think she’s gone home with him and left me here on my own.’

‘Oh dear. Would you like me to ask one of the others?’ I asked, looking helplessly over towards the ward desk where the nurses and clerk were in discussion about something. ‘They might know,’ I told her.

‘She said to—’ she began, at which point a nurse walked past. ‘Big boobs and a fat arse, that one,’ she said and then reverted to topic without missing a beat. ‘She said to wait for me but I haven’t seen her for some time,’ then she smiled and said. ‘I’ve not seen you here before.’

‘No, this is my first visit,’ I squeaked, trying not to laugh at her previous comment. Lucky I was wearing a mask.

At this point one of the admin or at least a plain clothes staff, she might have been a consultant I guess, came over and with a smile at me and the lady I was talking to she sat down on a chair the other side of her from me.

‘Hello Edna,’ she said.

‘Hello,’ said the little old dear, or Edna, as I now knew she was called. The newly arrived lady smiled over at me and I tried to smile back in as crinkly an eyed manner as possible so she realised that, behind the mask, I was smiling back and grateful to her for being kind to a dementia sufferer. Edna continued, ‘Has my friend gone?’

‘Yes Edna, she has,’ said the staff lady gently.

‘Oh,’ Edna’s face crumpled a bit. ‘She said she’d wait for me. What will I do now? How will I get home?’

‘Well, maybe you could go back to your room for a little while?’ asked the staff lady. She was so gentle and so sweet with the old lady that I almost wanted to cry (and I definitely wanted to hug her) because … Dad. And Mum but especially Dad because Mum isn’t as far gone as Edna was yet.

‘Should I? What if she hasn’t gone, I don’t want to miss her.’

‘No, I understand. Aren’t you tired, though, Edna?’

‘Yes, I am, very but I think I should wait for my friend.’

‘Why don’t you go back to your bed and wait there, then? You can have a little sleep.’

Clearly the idea of a sleep was very tempting but Edna’s reply sounded hesitant. ‘I don’t know if I should …’

‘Aren’t you tired?’

‘Yes I am.’

‘Why don’t you go back to your bed and have a sleep then? You won’t get lost. I’ll go with you and then, if she comes back, I can come and find you.’

And so they set off, ward lady taking Edna’s arm, shuffling slowly up the corridor, then back, into one of the ward bays and out again … at which point Mum had had her poo, the curtains round her bed were opened again and I was ushered back. I never found out if they got Edna back to bed. When I left the two of them were still shuffling slowly up and down the corridor, looking for Edna’s friend. The staff on that ward were lovely. Nothing was too much trouble and so many of the patients had dementia. Bearing in mind this was a ward to treat infections, the added load wasn’t what any of the staff would have signed up for.

We need more of this. We need compassion, and love and kindness. And I don’t know where it’s gone but we need it back. Maybe if everyone reading this tries to go out of their way to do one kind thing this week. One random act of kindness, it would be a start. Feel free to give it a try if you like. No obligation though.

And now … I must fly because tomorrow I have a six am start. Eeek!

Yep, tomorrow is Norcon. If you are interested, I will be at the Norfolk Showground which is on the outskirts of the city of Norwich, Norfolk, UK, tomorrow and the next day. I will be there, flogging my books to the unsuspecting public and devaluing them by signing them. Except it will be today and tomorrow by the time you read this because … scheduling techology. 🙂

If you want to know more or would like to come along, you can find more information here:

https://www.nor-con.co.uk/

On a completely different note …

Here’s some good news if you like cheap audio books!

Once again, I’m cutting my own throat and having a sale. Kobo is doing a buy more save more deal on audiobooks this September and the K’Barthan Series, as well as Too Good To Be True, are in it. As a result, to make it more exciting, I’ve reduced the first book in the series to 99c on Apple, Kobo (of course) and my own website. For anyone in the States, it’s also 99c on Barnes & Noble and Chirp (which is USA and Canada). So if you want to grab it while it’s mega cheap you can find store links and a bit more info here

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Tagged as author blog, author interviews, comedy fantasy fiction, dementia, Events and signings, K'Barth, M T McGuire, off topic, trying to be a writer, women in sci-fi, women writers, writers

2 Jul 2022 · 9:15 pm

Siberian hamsters and other alarums and excursions …

Well that was an interesting day. Or perhaps more accurately, morning. But it explains why there has been no blog post until now … that said, ‘now’ will probably be tomorrow (Sunday) in light of what time it is already, and the gargantuan amount of time that the activities of ‘this morning’ involved.

Originally, McOther and I were heading off to a car boot and from there to the garage to get his car fixed. However, when push came to shove we realised he wouldn’t have time to do the boot and the garage so he went to the garage and I eschewed the boot and went to the market instead. I also have some secret knitting that I wanted to do in his absence. More on that story … later.

McCat came running in and to my complete and utter horror, I realised he had something hanging out of his mouth. Something grey, with a tail.

Remember a few years ago when that McCat brought that vole in? I can’t find the original post but it ran under the fridge in the utility room and then to the units where it disappeared and I never saw it again. I always hoped it had found its way outside again but then the room began to smell and it wasn’t McCat’s earth box or McMini’s socks. Yes, it died and I did find a post I did later about discovering its lifeless body in the washing machine while I was on the phone to my mum, six months after its disappearance. If you need to jog your memory, it’s here.

So there’s McCat running about and there’s another chuffing vole with it’s tale and arse hanging out of his mouth one side and it’s head and front paws the other side. It’s squeaking,

‘You absolute cockwomble! Put me down immediately! Ow! That fucking smarts you smecking furry gobshite!’ etc. Actually I have no clue what it was saying but I think we could safely assume that it’d be something along those lines so that seems about right.

Come here you little bastard! I shout (because I’m classy like that) and rushed after him. I’m speaking to the cat at this pint, obvs. not the rodent in distress.

Luckily, I cornered McCat in the hall and because it was his vole and not mine and he was not dropping it at any cost. I was therefore able to pick him up and carry him to the door, deposit both of them on the mat outside, shut the door and lock the cat flap before he could bring it back in.

There was no rescuing the poor little critter now, so it was best to leave them to it so he killed it quickly. I grabbed my kit and ensuring that I didn’t let him in, I went to the market to do my shopping.

Upon my return, McCat was lying on his back on the door mat chirruping and burbling in his most loving manner. He showed me his tummy and it was clear that the dead vole on the mat beside him was a gift. Yes. This was an effort at reconciliation.

‘I know you are head of the house mummy,’ he was saying, ‘but I just couldn’t give up the vole. My natural instincts wouldn’t let me but you can have it now.’

Likewise, I cannot guarantee that was what he was saying but I know the mentalist tabby git so well now that I suspect that was a pretty good approximation.

Naturally, I thanked him for his gift, because it was only polite. Then I explained that it was a lovely thought, but if he didn’t mind, I’d just pick it up with this trowel here and pop it in the dustbin. I thought of burying it but he’d only dig it up again.

I went inside, put away my purchases and I was just bumbling about the house when I heard McCat scampering about. Uh-oh, that was the kind of scampering he does when he’s playing with Mr Squishy (his favourite toy) or when he’s playing with something else …

‘Squeak!’ said somebody, who was very definitely not McCat!

‘Fucking fuck!’ I yelled and leapt into action. McMini had a second vole cornered behind a box in a corner and of course I arrived, grabbed said box and the vole disappeared underneath the book case. But wait, not quite underneath. He was under the large books on the bottom shelf that stick out, leaving a tiny half inch gap between their bottoms and the floor.

I started removing the books but by this stage McCat had lost interest, the absolute bastard, or maybe he’d decided that I’d claimed the vole. Whatever the cause, he’d wandered off. The room we were in was full of places where a small vole could hide, die and then smell impressively. I was determined to ensure that when I poked it out from its hiding place, there were no other crannies for it to run to. In short, despite trying to rescue it from McCat I could have done with a tabby backstop and I’d definitely have preferred to let him kill it quickly it was that or a second round of let-me-die-under-your-furniture.

I surrounded the vole with a wall of heavy hardback books. Got a piece of cloth and grabbed it. I picked it up and took it outside. It looked as if it had had a nasty bump on the head but I left it to recover near the place where I thought McCat had caught it.

McCat locked in, I went out and had a look.

The vole was not well. It appeared unable to move its hands. It was clearly injured, it was squeaking and it was in distress. I rang the vet and explained that I had this rodent that was probably a vole only now … looking at it … I wasn’t 100% sure and could they help.

Clearly if my furry friend was, as I was beginning to suspect, a young rat, I wasn’t too bothered if McCat murdered its family. If it was a vole, I should probably take it somewhere for treatment and leave McCat locked in. McCat’s vet informed me that they had a pigeon and chicken specialist but nobody who was too good on small feral critters. They recommended I phone a different vet surgery, which I did.

I explained that I thought I might have an injured rat but that I didn’t know and though it seemed a bit nasty of me, I felt that, if it was a rat, I was OK about letting McCat out to murder the rest of its family, because there are millions of rats but that, if it was a vole, I’d keep him in. I also explained that I thought it might be dying, that the kind thing to do would be to kill it but that I wasn’t a farm kid and I doubted I could dispatch it cleanly without subjecting it to more physical and emotional trauma. Our cat used to catch mice when I was a kid and Dad used to have to kill the ones she hadn’t quite killed. He was really good at delivering a swift blow to the head but it always used to upset him … not to mention us.

Bring it in, the vet told me and they would take a look at it.

Going back to the ‘vole’ which very much might not be a vole, I decided I’d wear gloves to handle it. Good thing that, because it was a great deal livelier than it had been when I put it out and it bit me as I tried to catch it. Although the bites didn’t break the skin they did pierce the gloves. McOther was home by this time and helped me put it in a cardboard box. I walked up to the vet’s with it and they took it in to have a look.

Turns out I was right to doubt and it wasn’t a vole after all. Just call me Manuel but it was a bona fide Siberian hamster although it escaped the ratatouille so that’s nice. I do know we have rats in our garden, but … yeh. Probably a good thing if the cat eats them then. The rat did, indeed, have some kind of head injury which was making him unable to move properly and they put him to sleep so he didn’t suffer any more.

And the vole last time? Er hem. Yeh. That was a rat and all. Even with a light bite, the vet warned me about Weil’s disease and said that if I start to develop cold symptoms I must go to the doctor’s and explain what’s happened. Me, I’m just wondering what my half-rat-half-human superpower might be.

Other things

It looks alright on the claret one (right).

What I should have been doing this morning was working on my latest and top secret knitting project while McOther was out, which is his fabulous birthday present. OK, this is me, so you know, by now, that it’s not a fabulous present especially if it involves my knitting prowess, which is more knitting prowless to be honest. On the upside, it is something he’ll use and ~~enjoy~~ … he’ll use and at least there’s thought in it. It’s a wine sock. Yeh. Don’t all fall over with excitement.

People who like wine do blind tastings, which basically means you put the bottle in a sock, except socks are a bit shit because they make the bottom of the bottle uneven and more likely to fall over. Enter the um … wine sleeve? Wine sleeves leave the bottom of the bottle clear so it will stand up, no matter how drunk you are when you place it on the table.

I’ve made the bit for the neck of the bottle too short. The bit of metal over the cork can give tasters in the know a bit clue, so I need to unpick five rows of ribbing, add six rows of plain knitting and then do the ribbing bits again. It looks shit flaccid but when you put it on the bottle … yeh, OK, it still looks a bit shit until you get to a claret bottle … then … Oh yeh. Ish.

Oh alright. It’s a disaster really. I decided to use some wool I had left over from making a pair of socks for McMini and a pair for me. But there wasn’t quite enough to get it to the shoulders of the bottle. I didn’t want to buy another ball of wool to do three stripes of fancy knitting so I bastardised another ball of similar wool and to be honest, it almost looks deliberate. I will have to knit him another less bodged one as well, clearly, but this is a nice start.

Other news …

It’s a long time since I’ve mentioned McMini here. But rest assured he is no less eccentric. He is older, and even more sarcastic, but still a delight (to his parents anyway). He did once tell me that he wanted to do the teen thing and rebel against us but he liked us too much. I’m not sure that’s anything we did, it’s just luck of the draw. Luckily there are some people at his school that he prefers to rebel against more.

Anyway, last week we were we’ve been watching the tennis as a family and supporting one player, the underdog, naturally, because we’re British. The audience on the telly were mostly supporting the other more famous player. Between each point there were shouts from the audience,

‘Come on Oojah!’ or ‘You’ve got this Thingy!’ etc.

Then as it all died away after the ‘quiet please’ one bloke right up in the gods at the back shouted something that sounded like, ‘bollocks!’ into the silence.

‘That sounded like, “bollocks!”’ said McMini. ‘Did he just shout, “bollocks!”?’

Next point, same male voice did it again and again, McMini said,

‘I’m sure he said, “Bollocks!”.’

McOther and I admitted, giggling, that it did sound like it and he might be right.

Next up to serve was the player we were not supporting. She threw the ball up and as she swung to hit it, McMini shouted, ‘Bollocks!’ and she served a fault.

She served again and in spite of McMin’s rousing cry of, ‘Bollocks!’ it was in. The lady we were supporting returned it and as the other swung her racket to hit the ball back, I shouted, ‘Arse!’ and it went into the net.

‘Woah! She can hear us!’ shouted McMini.

It opened the floodgates. They played a tie-breaker with McMini and I continuing to shout bollocks, arse and for some reason, follicles. Our lady won. I made a cheer which reminded McMini of an impression I do of Dad doing an impression of one of his teachers dropping dead in the middle of assembly (he yelled ‘eeeeeruuuuuw!’ and keeled over apparently). So McMini adds the part of the story following that which is the boing, boing diddly boing this teacher’s wooden leg made after he’d measured his length.

Despite this coming out of nowhere, I knew exactly what McMini was referring to and started to guffaw at which point McOther who was actually watching the tennis turned to us briefly, smiled indulgently in an oh-here-they-go-again sort of manner and reverted his attention to the TV.

McMini and I sat there crying with laughter and all was right with the world.

It’s competition time …

OK. Have you ever seen extreme ironing? If you haven’t it’s worth looking it up because it’s mad. Here’s a potted summary.

Let’s do our own variant Blog peps! Extreme Reading. It’s as easy as 1, 2, 3.

Here’s how it works.

1. Get one of my books. It has to be an actual M T McGuire book. No other authors’ books are admissible. You can use a paperback or your e-thing with your e/audio book open and showing really obviously.

2. Go the area you have selected in which to read in an extreme manner, be it upside down, hanging from the ceiling. Tobogganing down the Cresta run, *sitting in the fountains at Trafalgar Square in your swimming cozzie or whatever.

3. Get photographed in your extreme reading position and then submit your photos to me. I think I will probably put them to the public vote.

* don’t do actual this though. You’ll get arrested.

How do I submit my photo MT? I hear you ask.

Well, I don’t to hear you ask but let’s not complicate this. Let’s pretend, for the sake of making this section that tiny bit more interesting, that I did. Here’s what you do.

Attach your photo photo to an email. You’ll need to give me your name and me some brief details saying where and when the photo was taken (date, place/town and country) and any witty commentary you wish to make about it. Then send it to me by email with the header, EXTREME READING TOURNAMENT, like that to list at hamgee.co.uk. You can send a maximum of two entries and it will cost you nothing to enter.

If you want to, you will be able to share the entries you submit on the Hamgee University Press Facebook page. I’ll make a specific post and pin it to the top so you can comment and add a photo but that’s not obligatory because I totally get that not everyone does Facebook. I wouldn’t do much social media if I didn’t have to.

Small Print: Nothing above 3mb please or Google won’t deliver them to me and a maximum of two entries per person. You may have to resize mobile/iThing photos to get them to me.

Obviously, it goes without saying that you shouldn’t do anything dangerous or stupid. This is an extreme reading tournament, it’s not the Darwin Awards or a game of who dares wins. Happy snapping.

And finally …

The Last Word is available in Audio.

If you enjoyed the short story, The Last Word, the audio of that is also available or at least, still available. If you need it, here’s a quick reminder of the blurb.

When Mrs Ormaloo brings the terrible news to the Turnadot Street Businesswomen’s Association that the Grongles are going to burn some more banned books on the night of Arnold, The Prophet’s birthday, Gladys and Ada decide to Take Steps. They even enrol some of the punters from their pub to help out. The books are in a warehouse being kept under guard. Gladys, Ada, Their Trev and the rest of the group embark on a plan of devilish cunning to rescue as many banned books from the flames as they can. But the key player in their plan is Humbert and there is no guarantee that he’ll cooperate.

Corporal Crundy is determined not to mess up his first assignment since his promotion. It should be easy. All he has to do is guard some books. Yeh. It should be a piece of cake but somehow that’s not the way it turns out.

To find it, go here.

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