Tag Archives: writers

10 Aug 2025 · 6:05 pm

I still aitn’t dead.

Well peps, it’s been a mighty long time but today I decided it’s high time I blugged a blog, so here I am.

Where have I been? Well, on holiday, trying to do some of the stuff I promised I’d do after I’d finished looking after Mum and Dad and … stuff.

However, I’ve been trying to use the time I have available to devote to my ‘author career’ to do writing. I think I tend to blog more when there’s nothing coming writing-wise because blogging is fun and keeps my hand in, but if the books are going well I tend to put all my writing energy into producing those. That said, despite the fact the writing is going pretty well this week, I really and truly thought it was high chuffing time I said something.

What’s happening then?

Well I’m preparing to do a stall at the fabulous Forward Festival next Saturday (16th). There is a book fair, I’m not going to that, but I will be at the Young Adult tent in the family friendly market. The whole festival is taking place from yesterday through to Sunday 17th. The thing runs for a whole week although there are no events tomorrow so everyone can recover from the weekend before they start the rest of it! Wise, I feel.

There is have a wide and varied selection of authors doing talks, a record fair and all sorts of events. Sorry this is sounding like a commercial isn’t it? Mwahahargh! Well since I’m doing a stall I guess it is but it’s also because it looks fab. I will definitely aim to go to some of the events as they look interesting. Case in point, the book fair, the vynal fair and probably one of the talks if I can manage it.

Talking of vynal and then obliquely, music. A brilliant thing happened this week. McMini was going to a re-enactment in Market Harborough and so when McOther and I dropped him off we decided to visit the town for the day. We visited the museum, which is free, and in the library, and has some cracking stuff in it including some stupendous finds bequeathed by a local metal detectorist. If he found that lot and got to keep it, heaven knows what wonderful things went through the treasure process and ended up in museums. Anyway, MTM verdict on the museum, small but perfectly formed. MTM verdict on Market Harborough, very pretty, a bit down at heel in places but containing all sorts of interesting shops, including a real cobbler etc.

There was also a decent number of charity shops there too and it was in one of these that McOther spotted an electrical item and, thinking it might be an amplifier, which McMini currently wants to source for his sound system, he went and had a look. I joined him and we discovered that it wasn’t an amp but was actually a CD/DVD player made by a company called Cambridge Audio, bearing the hefty price tag of £10.

Since McMini’s current interest is buying broken walkmans and fixing them, it seemed a good idea to buy it, since, even if it didn’t work, I reckoned we could probably get £20 for it on Ebay if we sold it for spares. And of course, there was every chance that McMini could fix it, or possibly, McMini’s extremely helpful mentor in this endeavour, a bloke up the road called Alan, who fixes extremely high-end stereo for people, and also adds things to make them more compatible with modern tech so their owners can plug them into their computers and similar.

Can we just take a moment, here, to give a big shout out to Alan? He has spent endless time and patience helping McMini fix one of the early Sanyo walkmans—which is admittedly, very cool—and taught him lots about fixing electronics, soldering etc in the process. I owe Alan a LOT of beer for his kindness.

Right on we go. Cambridge Audio are high end. The current CD thing they offer retails at £500. The one in the shop was older, obviously. I discovered, later, that it retailed at £300 in 2004. It was extremely popular as the picure quality was excellent apparently. I’m a big cynical sometimes about CD/DVD players in that they all do the same thing, essentially, so there shouldn’t really be a gap in quality, added to which, my own CD player is not too shabby. I reckoned there shouldn’t be too much difference but when I plugged it in to my stereo system and had a listen I was amazed to discover that there was a definite gap in quality. The Cambridge Audio one had more depth. It was more like listening to headphones than listening out loud. And it works. Woot.

Extra bonus points, I discovered it had a remote and because it was a popular model, there were several available to buy on ebay. I plumped for one that cost £8.99 with £3.99 postage. I have, therefore procured a very good CD player for £23! Hoorah.

Other stuff …

Weirdness continues. I have a polytunnel/greenhouse in the garden. It’s on the path from the gate, so I pass it on my way in every time I’ve been out. Often I pop in there on the way to the back door and just check that everyone has enough water and water the things that need some. Usually I am wearing a small rucksack on my back, which doubles as my handbag, when I do this. Sometimes, if I’m a bit clumsy, I turn the wrong way and knock an unripe fruit off the tomatoes with the bag. This is annoying.

It seems that I dislogdged a tomato this way at some point last week, which fell into the open pocket at the front of my bag. There it stayed until Saturday, when I was in Market Harborough and found it there. By this time, it had ripened, so I was able to have a very small bite of lunch. It was delicious so if this year’s crop all taste like that, we’re onto a winner.

Stuff like this, with the tomato, happens to me regularly.

A yellow tomato that has grown in a strange way with a blob at the front, which makes it look like a nose. It has eyes stuck on it and two of the green stalk fronds stick out behind it but because it’s shown from the front they look like green ears. It sits on a green baize table with a line of veneered wood at the side. Behind it is a big brown chest of drawers.

A tomato, yesterday

Last exciting thing …

… Which, as you’ll have gathered from the previous exciting things, is really not that exciting at all. I decided it might be good to get one of those festival trollies to transport my books around at events. Right now I’m using a sack barrow that has a box integrated into it. It’s excellent but when I start adding the banner, or heaven forefend, a table, it all gets a bit dodgy. If I put the banner on it wrong I also end up getting stuck in every single doorway I go through, as well, which is not helpful.

However, it’s one thing deciding that enough is enough and quite another trying to find a festival trolly which will fit in the boot of a Lotus Elise. Not the early ones which had a nice big boot, this is the diddy one with the souped-up 1.6 toyota yaris engine. There are only about five of them on the road (and I really don’t need ‘howmanyleft dot com’ to tell me this, the availability of spare parts is eloquent enough on its own. I have the ‘last in the uk’ of several bits). It also has the exhaust pipes in the middle and that means there is a giant lump in the boot floor to accommodate the catalytic converter underneath. What that means is it’s not always easy to fit things in. Then you have the added problem that the standard plastic boxes used for storage, which I could, sensibly, use for books, don’t fit in there, or my box sack barrow thing, or on the front seat/in the footwell.

At a book fair a while ago, I was admiring the festival trolley being wielded by my author mate Julia Blake (check out her books by the way, they’re excellent). Julia writes multi-genre so often has a LOT of books to carry. I’ve been toying with the idea of buying a festival trolley but thus far have been put off by the fact that a) I wasn’t sure any of them would fit in my car and b) they seemed to retail for about the same amount as a kidney on the black market. Yes. They were expensive.

However, Julia showed me hers (phnarr phnarr) demonstrating how it folded up, and how the wheels came off so it would fit in a very small space. More importantly, for my running-on-an-elastic-band-and-a-shoestring author business, it retailed at a price I could afford. I was impressed enough that we decided to see if we could jemmy it into the boot of my car once folded. Lo! And behold! It fitted. Yeh. Blimey. So Julia kindly sent me a link to buy one for myself.

I decided I’d buy one at once!

Spool forward a few months—because as we know, I am always incredibly swift to put any of my plans into action (not) and ‘right away’ in Mary world can be anything from ‘within the next five minutes’ to ‘sometime before I die of old age … probably’—I finally got round to it. I discovered that the makers of Julia’s original trolley had superceded it with new version, with wider wheels. It also had a wheel at each corner, whereas the original had the front wheels a little closer togther, in the middle. This had me worried —probably needlessly—about stability.

The only fly in the ointment still was the car. The car is non-negotiable. If I have to drive sodding miles I want to do it in a vehicle that is fun and diverting enough to drive to keep my attention. Otherwise my mind will wander and I will die. Would the new trolley fit? Well I read the measurements and it appeared to fold up slightly smaller than its predecessor. I knew that fitted so I reckoned I’d stick my neck out and buy it.

I bought one that promised to arrive next week. It arrived two day’s later. Which was nice, but a bit of a surprise, especially as I wasn’t in. We found it on the doorstep when we got home. The box was tiny box. See picture.

A brown cardboard box with a loo roll wrapped in jazzy black and white paper sitting on top of it to give a feel of size. It sits in front of a red chesterfield which is set against a beige wall with a white dado rail.

The tiny, tiny, box

Seriously, my cat couldn’t fit into this thing. See picture.

Picture shows a large tabby cat stretched out on a light blue and white striped duvet with a loo roll (wrapped in jazzy black and white paper) for scale

My enormous cat

OK so my cat is huge see picture, note loo roll for scale, but even so, you get the idea. What I’m saying is it’s a small box. When I say small, bearing in mind that the boxes I use for books are all small but I have put them in the passenger seat beside me because only one will fit in the boot, this box would fit in the boot. AND, there’d be room to shoehorn in another box … possibly. That’s how infinitesimally small it was.

Have I said enough about how small the box is? Hmm, yes, I think I probably have. Onward.

It was quite difficult to get the trolly out of the box, but once I had, I discovered that it folded up a ridiculously small size. We are talking small enough to fit in one of those re-usable bags you can get from Savers. Yeh. Miniscule.

a turquoise shopping bag with red and white writing on it srabding against a white panelled wall on a chequered wooden floor. in front of t,he bag is a loo roll wrapped in jazzy black and white paper. this design is white circles. in the bag you can make out a dark coloured canvas and metallic object which is clearly folded.

I haven’t used it yet. I’ve no idea if it travels over rough terrain and sand the way the sales pitch promises, or whether, like rollerblades, it stops dead when it hits a slightly raised paving slab (or stone) although at least it won’t pitch me forward onto my face the way rollerblades do in this situation. So there’s that.

The trolley will be having its first outing next week as I suspect it will be a long walk from the car to the venue for the Forward Festival.

Where you come in

I need a name for this trolley. OK bear with me, if you reckon you have my train of thought here and feel like jumping ahead, you’re probably right. But please, please, please, read this bit first..

Just for larks, I decided to set up a poll to allow my fans to pick a suitably K’Barthan name for the trolley. So far, almost both my fans have kindly joined in with the name poll—hoorah—and we have a clear leader.

Foolishly I gave voters the option to go off piste and suggest a name of their own, so long as they chose a K’Barthan related name from the books. About 20% of the respondents chose to choose and of those, a massive none of them kept it K’Barthan, mwahahahrgh!

This proves, beyond all doubt, no fucker will ever read the fecking question if they can possibly avoid it.

Likewise, if you give people more than one piece of information at a time and they will take absolutely NO fucking notice of the second piece. Indeed, if you are foolish enough to warn them NOT to do something, they will go out of their way to do that exact thing.

Perhaps this explains why, when you contact a support site for help and ask two questions—because they take 48 hours to respond and you haven’t got all day—they will only answer the first question you ask, forcing you to re-ask the second question and wait another 48 hours because asking more then one thing fries their heads.

Having said all that, the poll is still open, so if you want to help me choose a name for the Trolley it would be wonderful. All you have to do is follow this somewhat unwieldy link. Oh and if you do decide to suggest your own name, please keep it to a character name from my books. Ta.

Name the trolley

A festival trolley parked with the front towards us on a flagged stone floor. To the left part of a bamboo sofa is shown. To the right a pink,red, orange and green directors’s chair. Eyes are stuck on the trolley making it seem a little sad.

The trolley to be named …

Writing.

The latest K’Barthan thing is so nearly finished it hurts, although I may write quite a lot of the next one before I publish it. This being the plan, I do need to get my finger out of my arse pronto as I have an editing slot provisionally booked for September/October. Shit! That’s only a month away. Fuck!

Sorry where was I? Oh yes, the K’Barthan thing. I really don’t have much to write before it’s finished. It will need polishing though. Hmm.

The memoir. I’m reading a lot of other memoirs at the moment to see which ones I enjoy and respond to and which ones not so much. So far, all I’ve really discovered is that I like things that feel genuine. I like the characterisation to be good, even if it’s someone describing their loved ones or people they know. I also enjoy depth, although it’s surprising the memoires where this depth occurrs.

I’ve just finished Father Joe by Stephen Hendra. As a description of one person’s profound effect on another, it’s fabulous. Also I love the way he writes (bitchy but honest). He was clearly an absolute dick for a big part of his life, but his memoir is so honest and up front, and coupled with the irreverent style of his writing you can’t help liking him. I feel that I am closer to getting a handle on the kind of memoir I want to attempt but it’s still hard to look it in the face. I’m definitely getting a feel for how I want to write it though. The up-front honest style is definitely the way to go.

So there we are, I’ll leave you with a quick bit of info about the Forward Festival.

The Foreword Festival (9th August – 17th August, 2025)

The Foreword Festival, which I hope I have spelled correctly in this post—bloody auto-correct will keep changing it—is the first independent book festival in the UK. It is running in Stowmarket and it’s running … NOW.

The festival is taking place in Stowmarket, in Suffolk. There is a  LOT going on suffice it to say they’ve thought of absolutely everything. Yes, it even has its own beer! How cool is that?

PIcture of a bottle of beer on a light coloured wooden surface against a reddy-brown and grey tiled wall. The bottle is brown and crown top is lime green. The label reads ‘Roughacre Brewery’ on a light green background. Below is a white stripe with a black and white graphic of an opened book.Below reads ‘Foreword Festival’ which is also the festival logo, done in a font that’s a little like graffiti tags. Below this in smaller letters, the beer is described, ‘Golden pale ale, 3.6% ABV’

Foreword Festival beer!

If you are in striking distance of Stowmarket and fancy giving the festival a whirl, I can highly recommend it. Clearly the organisers have taste because they let me join in but seriously, it’s going to be fun. For comprehensive information as to what’s on when, go here:/https://forewordfestival.uk/

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1 May 2025 · 3:41 pm

Living the dream … as always

Hello there, yes, still alive. Things are busy though and I have books to write. I’m determined to publish a bloody book this year if it’s the last chuffing thing I do (and at this rate, it probably will be).

As a result I am working on two at once, the dementia memoir the first of the two sequels to Too Good To Be True. Yes, there are going to be two and Lord Vernon is in them as well. The first of those is so close to completion it hurts and is quite easy to write at the moment although I suspect that is merely because the dementia one is really hard and my brain’s Centre of Procrastination has turned to the only thing to hand.

As part of this, I’ve been working with a lovely blogging friend on this one, because I think I need to do it as part of the healing process. I’ve been trying to pin down what I want it to be about and I’m beginning to think that the only way I’m going to do that is to write a lot of it. BUT I’m also thinking that I may have hit on a way to write it that would give me scope to plait the three different strands of memoir stuff together coherently; funny stories, family history and Dad and Mum’s respective journey’s so … woot.

Garden Wildlife

No seriously, in a town, but yes, there is. For a couple of years now, we’ve had a hedgehog in the garden, who I have privately christened spiny Norma. Norma is fucking enormous, seriously, I shit you not. When I realised she had hoglets, I started feeding her. We use dry cat food, not hedgehog food because hedgehog food production is unregulated and they put things like mealworms in which are actually extremely bad for hedgehogs and make them ill. Kitten food is the best thing to use apparently, because the kibbles are nice and small.

This year, when I realised she was back again, I decided to buy a wildlife cam. I researched cameras and prices and found that one type seemed to get recommended somewhere on most of the top 10 lists so I decided that would be a good one.

Grainy black and white night-vision photo of a hedgehog crossing a patio towards a food bowl. The hedgehog is in the centre and the ground before her slightly over exposed while behind is the hint of folding table and darkness.

 

The retail price was £99 which is quite a massive wad to stump up for a trail cam so I shelved the idea until, doing more research to find a cheaper alternative, I discovered one that most of the top ten camera articles had a link to for less than £50 on Amazon. Much as I dislike buying from Amazon, it was a market place person rather than the company, itself, so I bought it.

It looks the business but needed an SD card. I have two 32gb SD cards which I used to use in a bullet cam I transferred between my car and on my bike. It was brilliant but unfortunately, after about 6 months, it started randomly turning itself off so I’ve stopped using it. I found the spare SD card I had for it only last week but this week when my new camera arrived could I find that spare SD? Could I bollocks? Could I even find the bullet cam to take the one out of there? Not on your fucking nelly.

Wank!

Never mind, I thought, I’ll have others. Indeed, I did have another one but I had to sort though the stuff on it and clear it before I could reformat it for the wildlife cam thingy. It took a chuffing eternity. I’m a dunderhead.

Anyway, net result. I’ve discovered that there are more hedgehogs bimbling around in our garden than I thought. I think it may be five, as my naked eye observations over the past week or so have been seeing three arriving early and then noticing another two had turned up later but I haven’t confirmed that.

However, I can confirm that there are four, by dint’ of the fact they have all appeared in camera shot at the same time. Also the vid has captured some courting behaviour which I’d seen with the naked eye from the kitchen window a couple of times, including a memorable moment when I discovered they were at it when I went to put out the food. I felt very bad for disturbing them. Luckily, since the breeding season lasts from April to September there’s plenty of time.

That said, while I know there’s hanky-panky going on, I’m not 100% certain between whom. I can’t quite work out if it’s one particularly randy male snuffing round and round in circles with two separate females or two separate males and one, or two, female(s). When the four turned up they arrived as two pairs so it could be two couples. I did see some light argy-bargy with the threesome who had been eating together happily for a week or so. One of them turned out to be Mr Randy and shoved another hog away from the food. It went limp and half curled up so he looked as if he was disposing of a body. Then she just lay there, inert, in the middle of the patio, while he huffed and puffed at the other one next to the food bowl.

There are two bowls now, which seems to have alleviated this.

Also, despite seeing a hog which was very definitely the original Spiny Norma doing courtship stuff with Mr Randy a couple of nights before I got the cam (they’re the ones I disturbed while I was putting the food out) I can’t now work out which one, in my films of courting, is the original Spiny Norma, or indeed if she’s there at all. This is mainly because with the best will in the world, night vision cameras are a bit shit. To be honest, I also can’t quite work out if there is only one Mr Randy trying to poink two females or if there are, indeed, two Mr Randys.

It’s a mystery. Hopefully it’s a mystery which will be solved with the aid of the camera. Fingers and toes crossed. Obviously, I have no definitive answers yet because I’ve only had it running for a few nights. I’ll keep you posted.

Other news: Helios at Ickworth

You what Mary?

Art, sweetie, art.

There’s this artist I follow called Luke Jerram. I happened upon him because some of his first pieces were these amazing models of bacteria made in glass. These things are stunning, although sadly, I haven’t photographed one myself, so I’m not sure if I’m allowed to post a photo. The fact I’m discussing it means that I can post one of his images under fair use. However, this is not the way copyright trolls see it, and having been caught out before—a process which involved about a year of negotiation over what was clearly a bullshit claim culminating in my paying for a photograph I’d used to illustrate a point (fair use) despite knowing their assertions were actually a load of old cock and bull, in order to to make them just fuck off already—I’d rather not.

Earlier this month Helios, an art installation by Luke Jerram was visiting Ickworth. I missed his Moon and Gaia earth installations, even though they came to a venue a few hundred yards up the road, because I’m a disorganised melt. As a result, I was determined that I would NOT be missing this one. It took a while to see it because it was installed outside and could only be on display when it wasn’t too windy. Naturally it was too windy for a lot of the week but I finally managed to see it on a gorgeous hot Sunday. Photos attached.

Luke Jerram, Artist’s, Helios at Ickworth. Inflatable orange ball set against a classical portico with gravel and viewers underneath on beanbags spread over beige mottled gravel. The top half of this view is seen through the foliage of an orange tree with a pair of oranges hanging either side, framing the orange ball in the middle.

I’m not sure it was as lovely as the other two but at the same time, it was outside, in daylight and because these things are lit, I suspect it would have worked better indoors or after dark. On the other hand, by standing with it between me and the sun, I got some lovely pictures of it looking glowy and orange against an azure sky.

Luke Jerram, Artist’s, Helios at Ickworth. Inflatable orange ball set against a classical portico with an azure sky above. This view is seen looking between a pair of blue flowering bushes (cyanothus) either side, framing the orange ball in the middle.

Luke Jerram, Artist’s, Helios at Ickworth. Inflatable orange ball set against a classical portico with hints of the gantry holding it aloft and behind it an azure sky.

Naturally because I’m smutty, I noticed at once that it had an anus.

Luke Jerram, Artist’s, Helios at Ickworth. Inflatable orange ball which is printed with a photograph of the sun. Close up to a part where we see a sunspot which looks a bit like an anus. Sorry I’m smutty like that.Phnark. This amused me.

Yet more Other news: I went to a marvellous party*.

*Divine Comedy fans might get that reference, no-one else will.

A friend of mine had a birthday party this week which involved a bookshop lock-in. Yeh, I know. Genius. As a result I have bought three books; one of which, the Grimoire Grammar School series (Parent Teacher Association) I’m already half way through. Although I’m reading Monument Men at the same time which is non-fiction and also excellent.

Anyway, off we went in a taxi to Clare where there is a fantastic bookshop. We arrived early so we went to the pub next door. I was offered a drink and asked for half a pint but got a whole one. It seemed churlish not to drink it so…

Then, slightly unsteadily on to the bookshop (I’m a cheap drunk). It was fab and I bought three books which I thought was fairly reserved of me. I am liking some of the ideas in cosy fantasy it’s not the horrifically clean, Ned Flanders style upstanding awfulness I feared. The one I’m reading is a genius idea; about a normal couple whose daughter has been bitten by a werewolf. The daughter is at magic school and they are feeling their way with the other parents (selkies, mages, vampires etc)..

My book purchases were oiled by the interesting gins I had which were all made by the lady who runs the book shop. It was particularly cool the way she opened a special cupboard behind the till and there were all the bottles lined up. Then she would pour a shot and ask us not to put the glass sticky down anywhere near the books. Mwahahahrgh! I had rhubarb and then damson which were fabulous. Next, I was tempted to try the rhubarb and ginger vodka but I was conscious that I might get a bit pissed and ebullient if I did that, and since I didn’t know everyone who was there, I decided it was best to call it a day at those two. Harris Books in Clare. Definitely worth a look.

We were also very generously provided with a £10 voucher by the Birthday Girl for more books from the store, so I was off to a good start. I bought three books. I could have bought more books. I could have bought a lot more books although I’m glad I didn’t because it meant I was able to buy four more at the Maker’s Market in Bury today! Mwahahargh!

Next, on to a fabulous brewery where they served up a very fine beer and baked or roast potatoes with various toppings to go with to absorb it all. This involved sitting outside, which was perfect, as it was a gorgeous evening.

Knowing I was buying books ahead of time, I’d bought a small rucksack to put them in because sometimes I’m surprisingly sensible (don’t get excited, it doesn’t happen often). I had elected to wear clothes that would be warm enough outside at night in a British early summer but at the same time, cool if it was warmer outside at night than … you know … British early summer.

This meant I’d packed a polo shirt in my bag and a scarf/shawl that was large enough to double up as a warm thing if the wind got up or temperatures plummeted. I appear to be permanently cold unless the temperature is over 24 (which is approaching 80 degrees in old/American money). On the bottom I was wearing voluminous pantaloons. I think they’re called ‘Harem Pants’ these days, but voluminous cotton trousers gathered in at the ankles, anyway. Think Ali-Baba and the 40 thieves.

Picture of messy room containing a middle age woman wearing a floaty dark blue vest top with red pantaloons. She is holding the pantaloons out to show how voluminous they are and grinning inanely.

The author clad in a pair of said pantaloons, although, not the original ones. Naturally. I have many.

Yeh. So I’m sitting there dressed as Aladdin and some other kind soul buys me a beer. I have not paid for a drink yet and I am distinctly half cut (being, as I am, a cheap drunk).

Anyhoo the table we were sat at was those bench table things that are ubiquitous to pubs everywhere; a slatted table with a bench stuck on either side. They were a bit shuggly, as they always are, and of course, you have to kind of climb into them to sit down. I put my beer carefully on the middle plank of the surface to avoid spillages and sat down.

However, then someone got up, or possibly sat down, the other side and … abracadabra! The plank shifted upwards suddenly, the glass tipped over and the entire fucking pint went down my front and on my trousers. Obviously it went between the planks as well as over them to ensure maximum coverage.

Do you know how much liquid a pint of beer is?

No? Well I can tell you.

It’s an absolute fuck-tonne of liquid.

There was only one thing uppermost in my mind when this disaster happened, well OK two things. First, naturally, was:

Shit! That’s a terrible waste of some really good beer.

The second thing—more of an instinct—which happened at the same time, was to leap up before any of the beer soaked through to my actual knickers.

Then as I stood, holding my sopping trousers away from my thighs—(my knickers don’t come down that low, I promise, but we are talking really soaking trousers here so … you know … seepage upwards was perfectly possible)—I had to decide what to do. The trousers needed to be wrung out, for certain, and possibly dried. Did the brewery have a ladies loo with a hand drying machine?

Did it fuck?

Arse.

Obviously, continuing the evening looking, and seeping, like someone who’d just had a bucket of water thrown over them wasn’t really an option. Then I remembered that I had a polo top and a scarf in my bag and, to whit, that if I’d been sitting about in a vest top and pasha pants, it was unlikely anyone would think it strange if that suddenly morphed into a polo shirt and a knee length ‘sarong’ because I looked that fucking weird already.

Except, could I get to the lav to change in private without a) getting slubbery beer-soaked trousers too close to my (currently) dry scarf and top to avoid soaking them too or b) getting slubbery beer-soaked trousers too close to my (currently) dry pants and then having to endure the entire evening with an unpleasantly damp mimsey?**

No.

**(That might just be the longest sentence in the world right there never mind, where was I? Ah yes onwards…)

What to do? The only thing I could do. I told everyone to look the other way, took off my top and put the polo shirt on. Then I took off the trousers, grabbed the scarf and wrapped it around me like some kind of shit sarong. On reflection I realised it was too long to tie like a sarong and also it would end up too short. Unsure as I was as to the tidiness of the topiary situation downstairs in the lady garden short seemed unwise. I didn’t want the world to see ‘spider legs’, giant black knickers, or indeed, the hairy thighs which I hadn’t bothered to shave. Hmm, would I have to hold the stupid sarong closed all night?

Yes.

But no!

Wait!

I had an idea!

Removing my ‘Kindness is as punk as fuck’ mum-badge off my bag I was able to use it, like a safety pin, to keep my modesty together. Then, just to be sure, I took the ‘I’m a little teapot’ badge off my jacket and fastened that the other side to keep both the ends I’d wound round me in situ.

This happened in front of everyone.

There was laughing.

But nobody gave a shit.

And someone bought me another beer.

Which was nice.

Even better my knickers stayed dry and having spread them out, my clothes dried enough to wear the pantaloons home so there was no worrying about losing my ‘skirt’ in the taxi.

Hoorah!

That’s me right there people, living the dream and winning at life.

Er hem … Sort of.

Fancy a change?

Fancy something a little bit weird? Why not read one of my books? A surprising number of people think they’re good and some are free. Woot. You can find those if you wend your way down the following linky-link: https://www.hamgee.co.uk/cmot-3https://www.hamgee.co.uk/cmot-3

Black and white photo on dark blue, fading to yellow background showing a street with two old ladies (cartoon silhouettes against the yellow bottom section). They are holding a cage with the silhouette of a parrot in it.

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30 Mar 2025 · 6:44 pm

Thoughts …

It’s Mothering Sunday today, which is British Mother’s day, which is a church holiday, which is why Mother’s day is in May in every other English-speaking country. Mothering Sunday was originally the day when people went back to their ‘mother church’ or in other words, it was the one day a year posh people’s servants were allowed to go home and visit their families.

I went to church, because I’m a fully paid up God botherer and I’m in the choir and I came home with three rather lovely polyanthuses, which I shall plant in the garden.

This Sunday also has another name, ‘Refreshment Sunday’ which was a give-us-a-break-from-the-sackcloth-and-ashes day in the middle of lent. At my church, it also happened to be the 50th wedding anniversary of a lovely couple so the refreshments in question were cake and prosecco (om-nom-nom). All very jolly.

Elderly lady sitting in a coral coloured chair holding a paper. Her glasses are perched on the end of her nose and she’s smiling

Mum.

This is the second Mothering Sunday without my mother and the first without McOther’s. I was thinking about how I felt which was alright, actually. I am still perennially knackered but I have a lot more energy these days, and most of the knackeredness is because I’m eating the wrong things I suspect. I need to take a bit of a pull at myself as I’ve slightly fallen off the healthy eating wagon this week.

Mentally, that’s alright too. I still think about Mum, well, both my parents a lot. It was kind of reassuring after she died to discover how turgid all the admin and paperwork was without Mum at the centre. I’m glad I realised, while she was alive, that her gentle presence in the middle of it all is what made it worthwhile. I’m glad I could see that at the time and I’m especially glad that I clocked it enough to relax in the moment with her on my visits and just enjoy being with her. She was, as she would have said, ‘a darling’.

It also got me thinking, I have a particular memory early on in the whole dementia business, when I was going to see Mum and Dad often but hadn’t settled into the routine of every Wednesday. Or perhaps it was a family thing and we were all down to stay at the house. I’m not sure. It’s not really the point here, I was dispatched to the vegetable garden to pick runner beans. I lost myself, moving backwards and forward along the row—frequently changing position to ensure I searched the climbing tent of bean plants from all angles, the better to spot the tasty treasures hanging within.

As I worked I forgot about everything else. A massive bee droned by and I paused to enjoy its progress as it trundled past, heading haphazardly towards the cabbages. Utterly in the moment, I forgot to be sad. A sense of uncomplicated happiness wrapped itself around me like a well-worn coat before I remembered that actually, things weren’t so great and I wasn’t like that now. I’d caught a glimpse of something through a forest, a tiny snapshot from a forgotten time that I could hardly recall, when happiness like that was my default state. A time when life was uncomplicated and the web of other people’s love which upheld me was solid and true, and unmarked by anything.

It was a sliver of something I hankered to return to, in the middle of a situation when I could never have it. Caught up in a world of sadness and concern that felt as if it was going to go on forever, it shocked me to realise it was lost. It was the most potent feeling. In some respects it made me sadder but I tried to see it as the gift of momentary respite it was and carry it with me.

Over ten years later, this morning, in church, I felt a mix of emotions as I sat and thought about things. And then, along with those thoughts came another weird glimpse of a life in reverse. Sure I miss my parents. When I look around the world as it is today, it still feels as if the light has died. But at the same time, I don’t miss watching them suffer. I don’t miss the heart-breaking sadness, or the life spent on tenterhooks, waiting for the disaster to fall and the call to come, waiting to drop everything and drive 150 miles in the middle of the night to pick up the pieces.

As I thought about it all, I realised that I am a lot closer to the cheerful happy person I was before this all blew up. There are a few things I regret, I had looked out a stack of books I thought I might bring home and never went back for them. I meant to grab some of my mother’s paintings and I forgot to do it on my last trip down there. I found a beautiful vellum document which was my great grandfather’s certificate of ordination. That was Dad’s grandfather. I decided to leave it for now, think on it and maybe collect it later. I never got back there so that’s gone too.

Finally, on the book shelves, I remember finding two leather bound bibles, both in a terrible state of disrepair with pages falling out, the spines hanging off and chunks of pages. One had a maroon leather cover, the New Standard Version, that had been my father’s. The second had a black leather cover and was similarly in pieces. That had belonged to my grandfather (my mother’s father). I think that was the 1600s original translation, which is mind-blowingly well written. Bizarrely, now I’ve had time to think about it, if you asked me what I would have rescued from the house if it was on fire, those two bibles would be one of the first things I’d have picked. And I left them? Why the fuck did I do that?

Two items that were precious to and venerated by people I loved and admired. Knobhead. Then again, I did manage to get almost all of the other inconsequential things that had stories; including the plants and they’ve survived the winter. So there’s that.

Also on the upside, I have the lodestar; my Mum’s engagement ring. I wear it all the time and in it is wrapped up everything about the people my parents were and the person I believe I should try and be. It was picked with love by Dad and worn daily by Mum. It reminds me of the light; their laughter their sense of mischief, the way they took the piss out of one another. It tells of their open-hearted acceptance of others, their kindness, their empathy. It reminds me that they are OK and that I now carry the light and that I will just have to voraciously read (and destroy the binding) on my own bloody bible. It shouldn’t be that hard to read it more often and I have copies of both editions for fuck’s sake.

And these days, instead of feeling as if the light has gone out and there’s a void where my parents should be, it’s as if I stand on solid ground and they, and the light, are there round me.

It’s alright.

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24 Feb 2025 · 7:48 pm

Bite me …

It’s been a while since I contacted anyone, I didn’t do any Christmas cards and things have been a bit higgledy-piggledy this Christmas and New Year. There are reasons but I can’t really talk about them. Suffice it to say there was a death in the family, so this Christmas was pretty much a rinse and repeat of last year. When stuff like this happens, I tend to write about it on my blog. There are two reasons for this.

ONE:

As an externaliser, sharing my thoughts helps me get them in order. In theory, as someone who sells stuff and writes books, sharing something this personal might be considered over sharing. Indeed last year, when I mentioned my mother’s death in a mailing, someone unsubscribed and left me a very unpleasant message. Hence, I only share stuff about people who I know wouldn’t or won’t mind. This death was someone who would mind, ergo, no externalising. But my WYSIWYG nature being what it is, I was unable to write a post without mentioning it. That meant no blog.

TWO:

The world political climate is grim and I know I should do something to stand against the bile and hatred that seems to be spewed everywhere at the moment in the name of ‘free speech’ which some folk seem to think means, license to bully people, lie and spread misery.

Sadly, I’ve no clue what to write and nothing will do any good. Apart from writing extensively about why this new strain of (We’re Not Allowed To Call It) Fascism is wank. Clearly many people can no longer imagine what a police state would be like since the USA’s descent into (We’re Not Allowed To Call It) Fascism and the apparent unconcern among a huge chunk of right wing voters there is a tad chilling and yes, I should comment. However, it’s also difficult to write about it until I get my thoughts in order; and they aren’t. At the same time, it’s difficult to ignore it when I attempt to write about anything else.

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

Yes you you miserable fuckers. You’re doing my tits.

Bizarrely, this week, I am finally writing a blog at a point when it’s actually physically painful to do so, because at last, I have a genuinely, ‘interesting’—well yeh, it’s all relative—story that I can share which will stop me straying into ground where my thoughts are not yet cohesive enough. Woot. Probably. Right, on we go.

Ouch

Yep. Muggins here managed to get bitten by a dog; a rottweiler, no less. Copious bleeding and stitches given, or at least, steri-strips and glue because apparently they don’t do stitches much these days. Let me tell you the entire sorry story.

PIcture of a hand wrapped in a bloody bandage against the white and grey background of a casualty department floor and wall.

I was booked to go on a dig on Saturday and McOther was off to Twickenham to watch England V Scotland in the Five Nations. McMini is now competent enough to be left at home although I’d booked him a haircut, left the money and promised to ring him in time to get out of bed and be ready. Luckily the hair cutter comes to us!

Anyway, off I went, parked up, got my kit ready for the briefing and hung around waiting. My detector was on so it and the spade were over my shoulder but my right hand was free. There was this big soppy old Rottweiler trundling about on an extended lead, people were patting him and he was trotting over to people and sniffing them. He came my way so I wandered over to have a chat.

He had lovely light brown eyebrows and his brow was wrinkled, friendly-dog style, his expression and demeanour open and friendly. Now, I’m a country girl. Animals, even the best of them, are unpredictable, especially if they don’t know you and a Rottweiler is a formidable dog and absolutely not one to get on the wrong side of. I usually make a point of asking people if I can touch their dogs before just striding in there for a pat.

However, this dog was greeting lots of people and was clearly a much loved part of the group. Indeed, I think I’ve seen him at a couple of digs myself. He’s well-behaved and properly trained.

So I made eye contact and then held my hand out spoke to him. I have since learned that it is not always a good idea to maintain eye contact with dogs as they can see this as aggression. I knew cats do but I didn’t realise dogs were the same in this. Anyway, he had a sniff and seemed alright with it so I stroked the top of his head. He was OK with that, too, but I didn’t think he was 100% comfortable so I decided to move back. I withdrew my hand and broke off eye contact as I made to step away. When I did so, he suddenly went for my hand. The noise alerted me before I saw him move.

Obviously, I did the natural thing, withdrew the hand pronto. This was kind of sensible, I mean as I understand it, and I may be wrong here but as far as I know, Rotweilers can lock their jaws closed and if they are spooked or panicked they’re more likely to do this. It might be arthritic but I do find my thumb useful, although I guess my instincts decided for me anyway.

Luckily I was wearing two pairs of gloves. I realised I’d been bitten because I felt the pressure and also the glove went with the dog. He shook it twice and dropped it on the ground, thumb completely severed.

’Ah!’ I said.

There’s some previous on this. I once cut my other thumb peeling vegetables because I thought there was a slug in the potato I was working on and threw the knife away, slashing my thumb in the process #NotAMelt. This also bled copiously, well, hands and heads do (feet too I should imagine) and I was ripped for some time because when it happened I just said, ‘ooh’ followed by silence.

On that occasion, my husband was beside me in seconds and I avoided casualty by din’t of the fact we had a doctor staying with us who always carried steri-strips in her car.

I still get the piss ripped out of me about the fact I will yell the place down if I stub my toe but that the McOthers know that if I say something calm and quiet like, ‘oh dear’ I’ve probably severed a limb.

In this case, the ‘Ah’ had a similar reaction.

A lot of people gathered round very quickly. Although the noise the dog made must have alerted them too I’m guessing.

My first thought was, ‘Bollocks! It’s bitten me! This had better not be bad!’ because I haven’t been out detecting in fucking ages and there wasn’t a doctor with steri-strips (and even if there was, it needed washed properly etc).

I checked the damage. The bit that hurt was the base of my thumb on the back of my hand. Yes, there were a couple of punctures just between the two knuckle joints. They were bleeding a fair bit and I could see the bruising coming up round them. Not too bad. The longest was only about a centimetre/half an inch. I reckoned I could get away with that if the organisers had a plaster I could stick on it. But the meaty bit at the base of my hand was also a bit stingy, as if I’d grazed it, so I thought I’d better check that too. Turning my hand over revealed a lovely gash about an inch and a half long. It looked like a slashed cushion with the stuffing spilling out. Strings of yellow fat and strawberry jam. Nice. It was also bleeding.

Copiously.

Everywhere.

Wank.

‘Ah,’ I said again. True to form.

If  you want to see that that looked like, click on this link: I’ve given you the option in case  you’re squeamish.

With a sinking heart, I explained that I’d had similar cut before and knew it needed stitches. Nobody disagreed. The various stewards cleaned it as best they could, applied dressings and bound it up tight to slow the bleeding.

Various kind others helped me pack my detector up, put it in back in the car and lock it. The guy who owned the dog was mortified but it so obviously wasn’t that kind of dog and I told him not to worry, no harm done.

The dig group is run very professionally by a husband and wife team and, usually three or four other stewards. There is always someone there who’s not digging for just this kind of eventuality, but also so there is someone back at the farmyard if anyone needs them and to view the finds.

The wife, Joanne, drove me to Colchester Hospital in their truck. Luckily she is very good company so we just chatted away as she drove. Google took us via Will’s mother’s, as usual, but we got there in reasonably good time, it was about half nine when we arrived.

Casualty was pretty full lots of people who’d injured themselves, left it overnight to see if they felt better and discovered they hadn’t. We joined the queue and I had to fill in a form which Joanne did for me, bless her. Colchester hospital is being refurbished so there were that many building works going on there it felt more like Heathrow but luckily there didn’t seem to be much work going on (it was Saturday) so it was reasonably quiet.

Joanne was sent off to the cafe because there weren’t enough seats for anyone other than the folks nursing injuries. Luckily she had a book with her. I joined another queue, to hand my form to some ladies behind glass and got told off for going to the nearest free lady before I was called forward so I had to scuttle back to the wait here sign. These ladies were both very stern, and slightly terrifying. I suspect they get a lot of shit.

Picture of a sideboard that looks really miserable

Stern …

Form handed in I sat and waited with my fellow victims. By just after ten it occurred to me that although all my fingers and thumb appeared to still be moving as required, I ought to tell the McOthers in case they had to fix something and I was kept in for surgery. I didn’t imagine it would take long but I’d had breakfast, so it’d be a while before I could be anaesthetised and I might not make it home until very late. McMini was at home alone, McOther having gone to London to watch Scotland play England in the five nations, so I’d need to tip him off or transfer him some cash for a takeaway supper. I put a message on our family group chat explaining what had happened.

Bless him, McOther replied at once asking if I could drive. I said I didn’t know as I hadn’t seen the doc but that I thought I’d be fine and if not I Joanne had already said that someone fully comprehensively insured from the dig crew would drive me. Lovely McOther said he would much rather see me home safe, that he was just about to meet the lads and that he’d explain what had happened, head straight round to Liverpool Street and get the next train to Colchester so he could drive me home.

I asked Joanne if we could pick him up from the station when I was done and she said yes, so it was all fixed.

At about half eleven, I was shown in to see a lovely doctor called Camilla. She was an absolute poppet. Apparently Colchester A&E has at least one dog bite every day, which I thought was a bit of an eye-opener. She had a look, washed it carefully, stuck steri-strips and glue over the long cut on the heel of my hand and the shorter one on my thumb. I asked if yanking my hand away had been unwise and the gist of her reply was, ‘not if you like having two thumbs’.

PIcture of a thumb held over a wooden effect laminate desk with a cut that has a steri-strip across it.

Number 1 cut with steri-strip applied.

That done she dressed it, bandaged me up and gave me a precautionary 3 day course of penicillin.  This has to be taken as equally distant apart as possible, with food, so the diet’s going a bit badly as I have to have an extra bite to eat at 4pm and 10pm. The first dose is taken with breakfast so that’s a win and I can drink with it. Also a win.

Picture of a hand with dressings over the thumb and palm

The final article, before bandaging.

The last thing the doctor did was hand me another pair of dressings and bandage to change the dressing on day three, which is probably today. Next Joanne drove me to Colchester Station to wait for McOther who would have got there in perfect time but the first train was cancelled so he had to catch the next one. We passed a very pleasant hour in the truck putting the world to rights. Then McOther’s train arrived so we picked him up, drove back to the farm and he drove me home. I’m not sure he enjoyed driving the Lotus, I’m also not sure the gearbox will ever be the same again, bless him. Shhh don’t tell him I said that.

We got back shortly after my hairdressing friend arrived to do McMini’s hair and while she was there, I got her to tidy up my hair as well … which was nice!

Aftermath

So there we are. It’s now day three and it’s stiffened up a lot, which is excruciating. BUT … I have discovered two things that really help, get your hands moving when it’s too painful to do it alone. Start with a heat pack to loosen it initially, or if you have a vibro massager use that in the general area (but not on the stitches, obviously). Both those are wonderful for reducing the pain and allowing freer movement. Then, once everything is more relaxed, touch typing seems to be brilliant for this kind of stiffness as it’s low impact but enough movement to keep things supple. Also after an injury like this you do need to keep things moving.

On the downside, after about half an hour it all stiffens up again. It maybe that I’ve been typing too much and overdone it perhaps, I dunno, but I’ve left The Pan of Hamgee standing on a roof disguised as half of a drag duo, with the other half at his side and a party of hostile members of the Grongolian Security Forces about to join them very soon, so I reckon I’m excused as I need to know what happens next. Flying car chase, obvs but I need to work out how it goes.

If you’re bored …

Or need to escape, why not check out one of my books. I give some away for free, because I’m kind like that, so you won’t even have to pay to be distracted from the absolute fucking car crash that is the world right now.

Lose yourself in some books here.

PIcture of the cover of Close Enough by M T McGuire depicting a man in a hat and cloak standing on a parapet looking out over the city and a hovvering flying car. The colour palette is mostly blue and purple but the parapet is orange.

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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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9 Jun 2024 · 6:02 pm

Stuff

A mixed bag this week so on we go.

On health

Because I have French blood—so if you ask how I am I’m going to smecking well tell you—I’m going to tell you how I am. Before you hesitatingly raise a hand, first finger extended in an ‘excuse me’ gesture and start to explain that you didn’t actually ask how I was at all, rest assured I’m going to tell you, anyway.

Picture of an iced bun with eyes stuck on it so it looks as if it's a miserable face bearing the legend, 'this too shall pass but some other bullshit will come and take its place becausae it never fucking ends.

Once again, I have been riding the vomit comet this week, although I did manage not to actually hurl, merely emptying at extreme speed at 3.00 am in a manner reminiscent of someone upending a bucket. But since I did not find myself vomiting into the small plastic pot I have learned to keep ready and disinfected by the loo for just this purpose, I’ll chalk up this latest round of Mary versus The Virus as a draw.

Another visit to the Doctor and I have new HRT to try—patches—which seems to work better as I am already sleeping more soundly. I have to change the patches twice a week, which is irritating because as we all know there are seven days in a week. Seven is a prime number, which means it’s divisible by one, itself and fuck all else so dividing it into two is tricky. I have elected to go for 3.5 days which so far means 8am on Saturday, followed by 8pm on Tuesday, back to 8 am on Saturday and so on. It would have been much easier if the instructions were something sensible like, change the patch every three days. Never mind. Onwards.

Out and about

Between Saturday’s hurlathon and Thursday’s attack of fire-hose bottom (or FHB as I like to call it) I finally managed to get a gym session in, which is always good, had a swim, did ‘Walk and Whinge’ with my friend Jill or a ‘Grumble in the Jungle’ in this case, since we took the woodland path.

A picture of british countryside, rolling hills and trees, with sunshine and blue sky

Picture from the woodland path …

We also went to see Miles Jupp’s one man show, On I Bang at The Theatre Royal in Bury St Edmunds on Thursday night, pre my FHB attack. I cannot recommend the Theatre Royal enough, OK, like every theatre, it could do with a couple more loos—even the gents queue out of the door during the interval—but otherwise it’s a lovely venue, the staff are delightful and it’s small which makes is so much more intimate, and therefore, more fun. They also get some amazingly big names in comedy. I saw Frank Skinner there a couple of months ago, I was in the third row back, which was brilliant although I missed Michael McIntyre and Dara O’Brien.

Anyway, if you can go and see On I Bang, I highly recommend it. Miles Jupp’s relationship with his wife appears to be a facsimile of mine with McOther in that he clearly shares the same manic need for tidiness while I got the impression his wife, like myself, might be a bit more louche about that aspect of keeping house.

It was also clear that the dynamic with which the Jupps handle this difference was very similar to ours.  Jupp comes out of it as a genuinely lovely chap, which he proved beyond doubt on this particular evening when someone in the audience was taken ill. OK, so the whole show was about a similar thing happening to him, plus the aftermath, but it wasn’t necessarily a given that he’d be empathetic. In the event he was the first person to notice, simply stopping, looking out into the audience and saying, ‘are you alright?’

When it was clear that, no, the chap was not alright, he calmly asked if there were any medically trained people who could help, asked if they could bring the lights up and then enquired whether they needed him to stop the performance at this point or just pause. The end result was a pause while the gentleman was helped out of the theatre.

However, the thoughtful and kindly manner in which Jupp handled the crisis was extremely impressive. Concluding, after the chap had been helped out of the auditorium, that he was thinking about offering him tickets to On I Bang in Ipswich the following Saturday but that, if the show affected the man the same way a second time, he might not want them. After the actual interval, the first thing he mentioned when he came on again was that the taken-ill-man was OK.

So that was grand. I passed up a chance to do a comicon in Ipswich today because we were due to go to my Uncle’s 90th Birthday celebration yesterday and I wasn’t sure I could manage two days running after last Saturday’s outbreak, let alone after Thursdays’s extra helping. That was grand. It being Saturday and there being GCSEs we went down and back in the day.

Screengrab from Google Maps showing the amusingly named town of Titsey and the clogged M25

The M25 is mostly down from 4 lanes to 3 all the way round at the moment which means it’s bollocksed at the best of times. This wasn’t too bad, but it was the M11 which screwed us. A lorry side swiped a car and ruptured its diesel tank in the process. We sat for 45 minutes and then they’d sorted out the bollards and we were allowed through along one lane.

Having taken 3 hours, and the rest, to get down there, we decided it was best to leave by about 4, but after a worrying trip to the loo during pudding, I decided it might be prudent for us to leave at once, just in case. In the event, my fears proved unfounded, but had we stayed, and I’d got more tired, they could well have been borne out by my ever troublesome guts. It’s very difficult to predict it for certain, as I’ve no clue what sets it off.

Going past the morning’s crash site on the M11 on our way back, it was still a lane down although they were just finishing up resurfacing it. We noticed there was hardly any traffic and discovered that was because exactly the same thing had happened about five miles further up. There was a tailback for about 10 miles and it looked like they’d closed the road. We were extremely glad it wasn’t an evening do and we weren’t sitting in it on our way down.

This morning, I had a suspicion I was going to be the only member of the choir at church and because of riding the Vomit Comet last Saturday and Thursday night, I hadn’t passed a cursory glance over the hymns, mass setting etc the way I usually do. There are only three of us, anyway, but the other two are consummate musicians and while I can read music, it is a bit hit and miss. I’m there to make up the numbers really. Today the other two were away and it was a choir of one; me.

Picture of the insides of a church reflected in the brass dome at the bottom of the lectern.

The mass was one I hadn’t sung for rather a long time and I was a bit nervous as I hadn’t prepared myself in advance. I managed to sing one of the responses a third higher than everyone else, which was a bit embarrassing and of course, a lot of the congregation followed me and wondered why it was such a strain on their vocal chords.

Luckily one of the altar party doubles up as choir from time to time so he helped out with some of the descanty bits in the mass setting, albeit an octave lower. I forgot the first of four in the gloria but managed to remember the others even if I forgot to go up a note instead of down at the end. It didn’t really matter as it still went with the rest of the chord. In the Agnes Dei, the organist was kind enough to pick the alternative bits out for me, which was very helpful of him.

To my horror, I managed to forget the first three notes of the second (gradual in Anglican nerd-speak) hymn. Naturally it was the one where we weren’t singing the tune printed next to it in the book. It’s one I know backwards, upside down and inside out … until I think about it. Luckily I managed to calm down, stop thinking about it and switch to autopilot by the end of verse three so at least I got it right twice. After that, apart from the aforementioned Angus Dei, I blundered through to the end of the service largely unscathed. There was another slightly sticky moment when we had a hymn which went to the tune of another, slightly more famous hymn, and I had to concentrate extremely hard to ensure I didn’t switch to autopilot and end up singing the wrong words.

Afterwards there were homemade biscuits and having spent a fair part of the week emitting my entire contents, suddenly, and at speed, I had no qualms about replenishing my lost calories by eating four of them. I also had coffee. Mmm. After the first bout of FHB finished, I kicked caffeinated coffee into touch because I’d not been able to drink it for most of March and April while I had my endless crapathon. Previous to that, I had reached the stage where I had a raging headache if denied access to coffee in the morning, not to mention trouble getting out of bed.

Having got rid of that annoying dependency, it seemed a bit mad to re-establish it so I’ve been drinking decaf, except occasionally. However, I have discovered that drinking the caffeinated stuff now gives me a little bit of a buzz! Mwahahahargh! Which is nice.

On writing

My writing is really pissing me off at the moment. I have a story, with a timeline but I am slightly flummoxed as to how I deal with it.

There are two sub characters, a gang member and a kidnapped sausage maker, whose relationship is a big part of the whole thing. The sausage maker is being forced to make sausage against her will and refuses. Her gaoler is trying to persuade her because his boss wants her to make 8 more sausages after which they promise to release her. The trouble is, they promised to release her after she’d made four, eight and then twelve sausages so the sausage maker has refused to make any more.

Finally, the gang leader has the sausage maker’s husband kidnapped, intending to threaten his murder unless the sausage maker makes more sausages. Enter our hero, The Pan of Hamgee, who blunders upon the kidnapping as it happens, and after finding out some more about it, reports it to Big Merv who decides to send a message to the gang leader who has done the kidnapping.

Originally, delivering that message was where the story starts. Then I rolled it back to at the point the husband was kidnapped. I can start it with the delivery, but … there has to be some time before that for the relationship between the kidnapped sausage maker and her gaoler to develop. That either means a prologue or flashbacks. I suppose it’s possible flashbacks might work… I think prologues are like cliffhangers, some people avoid them on principle, and lord knows I have few enough readers without pissing some of them off before I start. But others hate flashbacks.

It’s all extremely irritating and although I think I’ve almost solved it, it’s stalled progress for a chuffing eternity, which is irritating in the extreme but I think I’m nearly there now… probably.

Right with that, it’s time to go and help cook stuff. I also have to interrogate my son about cake.

Afore ye go …

picture of four book covers in M T McGuire’s humorous science fiction fantasy trilogy The K’Barthan SeriesIf you’d like to read something, there’s always a free book. I have some free at retailers, and more free from me. You can find links and information as to where and how to download them here

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12 May 2024 · 11:11 am

Indie Writers Book Fair (Huntingdon) and a catch up

picture of spring woodland with cow parsley and young trees

A nice spring picture …

I’ve been meaning to write a post for some time but unfortunately while, like The Leaning Tower of Pisa, I had the inclination, unlike Big Ben, I did not have the time.  Also the weather has been fantastic and so much stuff has to be done with a wi-fi connection these days that I can’t just sit outside and type stuff up like I used to. Everything has to be a work station rather than of any practicable use. Despite the lack of internet access, I keep finding the lure of sitting outside in the sun reading a book to be too great. And I’ve been ill, so it’s good for me to relax and just read a book or chill. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Last night I continued with the time honoured British tradition of missing the Northern Lights when they appear. In this case, in Suffolk and as far south as Brighton. Lots of fabulous pictures on t’interweb taken some time after I went to bed. It’s going to happen again tonight apparently, although I suspect that is the point we will adhere to the other tried and tested British tradition, of it being cloudy, and I will sit in a deck chair in the garden until all’s blue seeing nothing while a light show of unfathomable beauty plays out above the clouds.

Ho hum.

Other news…

Mc(not so)Mini has done his first GCSE this week. Best of luck to everyone doing exams over the next few months. Here’s hoping everything goes OK for him.

Health wise I am hoping I’ve turned the corner. Lots of things ache but otherwise, I’m feeling a lot better and my innards appear to have settled down … which is quite a relief.

Book news …

I have been wondering whether to start sharing chapters of my works in progress as they … you know … progress. To be honest because of the way I write, it would be less chapters and more random scattered bits. Apparently The New Way Forward for authors is a subscription. I get that subscriptions are good for companies in that they can predict the money coming in but I’m struggling to see the benefit for readers, unless they are happy to pay a couple of quid a month to read the tangled mess that is my stuff before I smack it into shape.

On, on… probably …

Personally, I have two subscriptions; Disney and Spotify. I don’t use either as much as I should to justify paying for them. Oh yes and I have a subscription to dishwasher tablets and washing powder which I basically keep paused until I need them and then go to the website and click on the ‘help, I need it now button’ and just buy them. I’ve never, yet managed to work out how much washing stuff I’m going to use so as a punter, a lot of the things people are selling subscription only these days look like a bit of a crap bet.

From the author subs point of view, I’m thinking that if people did subscribe, I’d want it to be a community too. So bits of random writing for folks to read and then maybe something like the K’Barthan Jolly Japery facebook group, but where, perhaps, there was a bit more me or video things or live chats or… um … something.

You can see I’m really awash with ideas here. Mmm.

But on paper the subscription makes sense for vendors but not so much for customers.

OK, so people who love my stuff subscribe and get to see my work in progress and get access to a fantastic online community which is a bit more in my control. I am aware that Facebook could ban me for something bizarre, like the time I said ‘boys are gross’ when discussing my son’s socks in a school parents’ group and got banned from Facebook for a month. Getting locked out of my own fan group is a very real possibility. I have emergency moderators for this but it’s still a bit of a worry.

Sorry, tangent there (quelle surprise). So as I was saying, on paper it makes sense, but if other people are like me then all these subscriptions to authors soon add up to something big and unmanageable. I could only subscribe to two or three, just as this blog will never take off because I can only cope with following and commenting on a handful of other blogs that I really enjoy and I would need to interact with hundreds to get any traction, so I feel I would not do well with something like Substack because it’s based on you spending all your time there reading and commenting on other posts and I lack the spoons for that.

OK, so I know a lot of authors don’t care if they have 10 subscribers and only two read or interact but … I do.

Then again, the thing that sells books for me is … me. I have far more success going to events, standing behind a table dressed as my main character and being a twat relentlessly funny* at people until they buy a book, than I do trying to work out what the normals would put into a search engine to get my books seen, and then purchased, online.

* Yeh. I say ‘funny’ but I suspect other people’s mileage may vary.

Standing behind a table being relentlessly funny* at people until they buy a book … *probably.

There is also little or no money for ads. Seriously. Absolutely fuck all. Gone are the days when I could budget £2 a day for a mailing list sign up ad and have 30 or so people quietly signing up to my mailing list each month. These days it’s £10 a day on facebook to get out of ‘learning’ and anyway, if I spend £10 a day on ads to my store, I need to sell 5 or more books per click to pay for that £10. I only have a few books and I would bet there are not enough. I reckon I’d need more like 30 books to make my money back, indeed the red-hot organised lady on the panel with me reckoned there was no point in advertising with less than 20 books. I have 11 … 8 if I count the ones I charge people actual money for.

Another thing that is leaning me towards the community thing is that doing a Kickstarter was a bit of an eye-opener. My aim with that was to test the water; avoid incurring any design costs by doing it myself, do it print on demand and try to make a third of the overall total in profit, because it’s actually quite hard work and there’s a fair bit of admin.

The books cost £10 each to print for the hardback and £5 each for the paperback. Most buyers were abroad but I can keep the postage costs between £10 and £15 if I have the books delivered to me and then send everything by boat. I expected to sell about five but 31 people bought copies. I even made some UK sales, which is a little cheaper £5-£7 so that makes up for some of the peeps further afield where I took a hit on the postage.

However, the most fun bit of the Kickstarter was all the chat, when backers asked me questions and I got to interact with them. That’s a big part of it for me. Now there is time in my life to think, I reckon I should look harder to find ways where I get to do more of what I love and less of the things that are hard going. While I’m on the brink of starting to write again, but still, mainly, sorting Mum’s affairs, it seems a good time to work that sort of stuff out. So far what I’m thinking is that it’s me people follow (although that may be because most of the signed up to my mailing list to get a free book and seven years on they haven’t read it yet). But yeh, it seems to be a big part me side as well as books and characters, so maybe I should capitalise on that … I dunno …

Talking of the fun stuff …

Last weekend, 4th May, I went to the Indy Book Fair at Centenary Hall in Huntingdon. It was a gas.

First up, one of the K’Barthan Jolly Japery group came to see me and hung out with me all day, which was lovely. I’ve known her sister for years but never met her so that was awesome. And she brought me coffee and millionaire shortbread! Which was awesome! Thank you, you know who you are. 🙂

Second, I dunno … I wasn’t really trying to sell the books that hard. I was just telling people about them, but it was busy and there were lots of people to talk to and I did sell stuff. There was a maker’s market on outside, which might have helped as it probably brought in people who were prepared to spend some cash, but austerity aside, people seem to be spending more. And whereas last year, my books were doing well online but in Real Life people wanted dark gritty realism, they seem to have swung back. Either that or I have a better pitch going now.

In addition, cash purchases were up so I’m guessing people had been saving up, and I had a wonderful time talking to people. As with the previous event (Sci Fi Weekender at Yarmouth) people were buying whole series, which was a bit of a thing and not a sales trend I’ve seen since 2017.

Having failed dismally to sell Too Good To Be True at any of these things, I suddenly got rid of a whole bunch of copies of that, which was nice! 🙂

I loved seeing this lady carrying her shopping home on her head as I drank a Peroni Zero

After a hurried supper with another author, snatched from a couple of fast food outlets, and a zero alcohol beer outside the venue (very nice) we went back inside for the evening events which were two panels; on producing audiobooks and selling ‘wide’, ie not just on Amazon. I was on the wide panel, which was great fun.

I’m the one with the hat on.

There were four of us, myself, a proper, grown-up successful author and two of the big hitters in paperback printing and distribution. A lot of the questions were about print so I got a pretty easy ride and managed not to fart, fidget (too much) or interrupt too often. Although I think my contribution was the least useful of all the members but it was great fun. I really hope I’ll be asked back next year.

The whole thing felt up beat and full of vibrant spiffy joy. I was just chatting to people and then they bought stuff. I suppose it was a book fair so they were going to turn up ready to buy things, but maybe there were more of them, or perhaps I was more relaxed. But… it sort of feels like something’s turned the corner. I wouldn’t say I’m going places, but I do think I’m going to be able to start writing again soon and that I’ll have a lot more capacity than I have had this last 15 years. I’m looking forward to it.

Right then. It’s time I did something else. I have chapters to read, some editing to do and maybe a bit of writing. Also I have to plan my week.

And finally …

I leave you with this smashing stone which I bought in the Maker’s Market (Bury St Edmunds) on Sunday. It’s a piece of quartz of some kind, but to me it looks more like a ‘Sheba, flakes of salmon in jelly stone’. I guess if I was naming it properly I’d call this gem, ‘salmon in aspic stone’. Yeh, you saw it here first.

picture of a heart shaped polished piece of quartz, with inclusions that makes it look like salmon flakes in jelley.

Salmon flakes in jelly/salmon in aspic stone … both sides. 🙂

Looking at it, one side of it, the one shown on the right, it looks like a face with an eye, an eyebrow and a nose to me … you know … as well as the salmon flakes. What do you reckon?

 

 

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21 Oct 2023 · 12:00 pm

Balls … all of it.

Well, it’s been a long time and I suspect most of you have wandered off, assuming I have disappeared off into the ether.

Nope, like a bad smell, I never go away, I linger. I have just … yeh well, to be honest I’ve completely lost the plot. I wouldn’t say I’m actually burning out yet but let’s say … we’re on the red line and there’s definitely an alarming aroma of burning oil and hot metal. Hence my stepping back. So having not blogged for a long time it’s time to catch up. Yes. You know what you’re going to get now, don’t you? That’s right. An entire sodding book. Mwahahahrgh. Jolly dee then. On we go.

You want to know how my life’s going right now? Here’s how it’s going.

A few days ago, as I was walking up the garden path, minding my own bleedin’ business when a sleepy wasp fell out of a tree and landed on my head, at which point it got stuck in my hair and the little bastard stung my face. Worse, the breeze kept blowing my hair, plus—now incandescent—jabby stingy wasp, back at my cheek. As I flapped at my hair to try and keep the wasp off me, and at the same time, shake it free, I inadvertently batted my glasses into the shrubbery. Then of course, I couldn’t find them because I wasn’t wearing my bloody glasses. Luckily McOther heard me effing and blinding, took pity on me and found them for me, although he had to put on his reading glasses first or he wouldn’t have been able to sodding see.

Finally, after repeated bouts of ‘the Wasp Dance’ the pesky insect in question fell out of my hair and landed drunkenly on the patio. I’m afraid I was very angry with it and trod on it.

Welcome to my world. Shit like this happening the whole. Fucking. Time. Shit so fucking bizarre you couldn’t make it up; day, after day, after day. I really should write more of it down.

So that’s set the tone. Now you know what you’re in for with the rest of this. Mwahahahrgh! I can’t say my life is lacking in comedy it’s just that it’s the kind of stuff that, if I put it in a book, would have reviewers saying it was too slapstick and unrealistic to be true.

Mmm.

The evidence would suggest that, here at McGuire towers, we are some kind of fucking masochists, we have had the fullest room in the house re floored. Why the fuck did we do that? This has involved us moving shelves, about 300 books and about 8,000 LPs a table, a sofa, a doll’s house, a printer, a LOT of curtains and Lord knows how much other shite into different parts of the house.

When the LPs are leaning against the wall along the length of 3 metre room double thickness, you know there are rather a lot of them. Said room is also full of boxes of books, tables, there’s a doll’s house and all sorts of shit. Not to mention a sofa blocking the door so you can’t actually get into it and a giant set of shelves all but blocking the hall.

The room being re floored is also a main thoroughfare. Think, central hall. So to get from most of the house to the kitchen we have to go up the stairs, along a corridor, and down the back stairs into the kitchen instead of along a hall and through a room, because we can’t walk on a newly tiled floors because … glue.

To get to the utility room and the freezer we have to go outside into the pissing rain, round the side of the house and in through the back door. To put the cat to bed … well … he’s having to sleep in another room. He’s doing really well—because cats don’t like this kind of stuff but he hasn’t run away—although I suspect he’s not enjoying it. There were many set backs. It was meant to happen two weeks ago but other jobs over ran and the chap couldn’t get to us until this week.

On the up side, we can access all rooms without having to actually climb in through a window. Frankly, the state things are, I call that a win.

Unfortunately, having the entire house becoming more and more discombobulated over a period of several weeks (because that room has taken a long time to clear because it was packed well above it’s plimsoll line with shit, anyway) has left me astoundingly arse about face. I have no fucking clue which way is up. Or at least, even less fucking clue than I usually have. On the up side. They’re done. And though we can’t walk on it tonight. Again. It will be dry tomorrow and—pending a quick once over with a mop—finished.

Then it will take us another three weeks to move all the shit back again.

No. We’re not going to.

We’re going to sort though the shit and sell/bin it. That’s kind of OK except I have so much fucking shit to sort though and get rid of and now it looks like I might be adding Mum’s to the mix because we all know how brilliant I am at cataloguing and tidying things up or selling them/giving them away. There’s a reason my rather fabulous collection of plastic tat has been languishing in 39 boxes above the garage since we moved here 15 years ago, instead of on display and it’s not all about lacking the room.

(Yes, just in case you need this spelled out. I’m shit at those things. Really, astoundingly, gobsmackingly, special-super-hero-attribute levels of shit, so my life is going to be an unbounded joy for the next six months/year but hopefully things will fuck off and leave me alone after that.)

On the Mum front. Mum is running out of money. The people who are supposed to be getting continuing care for us appear to have stopped doing whatever it is they do and I’ve chalked 4 grand of her cash up to experience. My interactions with them are very different to that of Mum’s carer, who recommended them to us. She said they couldn’t do enough to help, my experience is they have taken 4 grand of Mum’s cash and can’t do enough not to. I’ve paid 4k and it seems their job is to tell me what to do and wait until I do it for them. I did think, for that kind of eye watering fee, that the carers and I were going to provide the information and they were going to collate it.

No. Maybe the precedents they will use to prove their case will make the cash worth it. Maybe but it’s worrying, when the key reason I went to them was because I knew I was too burned out to collect the information required and navigate the process on my own in the time we have available.

The way things are, I am, indeed, too burned out to chase this stuff up myself and they aren’t doing it either. They do not volunteer any communication. I have to contact them, they take two or three days to reply to emails, and it’s not possible to speak to anyone on the phone, you have to leave a message and then they call you back, usually during a doctor’s appointment, or while you’re driving, or on the loo or in an area of stupendously sketchy mobile phone coverage.

I asked how it was going and they said they were waiting for medical records and asked me to send a document I’d already sent. I did so and chased up Mum’s doctor. They then contacted me to say they were still waiting for the records. I said I’d chased and asked them to let me know when the records arrived. Next port of call, chase them again and then, presumably, chase it up with Mum’s doctor.

Having employed them because I needed someone to do this shit for me, to take the admin out of my hands because I’m too slow to do it they’re just sitting there making me do it all. Indeed, it seems I’ve lumbered myself with a double layer, and a stopper between myself and the care board that is slowing things down rather than speeding them up.

Ho hum. So yeh. It’s probably actually taken longer than it would have done if I’d done it on my own. Head. Desk.

A learning moment then. Chalking that one up to experience. I’ve sent them heaven knows how many documents, in certain instances, several times. You wait. I’ll get a lovely email from them tomorrow now and feel really guilty for writing this.

No. I won’t. Although they say it takes 8 weeks to process after they’ve received all the information and I think Mum’s doctor is dragging his feet signing off the medical records, because he’s absolutely swamped with admin.

Meanwhile things are progressing slowly with identifying a possible learning issue for McMini. I am hoping to get an assessment for visual processing which is something that is relatively straightforward to sort once it’s identified. He’s burned out and I don’t think he would be burning out from school if there wasn’t something making life extra difficult for him. His intellect is razor sharp, which makes it all the more difficult. As I understand it, burn out is one of the tell-tale signs of a learning thing.

Other Mum news. OK, so … the continuing health care company may yet come through, but Mum’s financial reserves are unlikely to outlast the time it is going to take. That means we have to sell the house. Talking to one of her carers the other Wednesday, she confirmed that Mum doesn’t really know where she is anymore, which means we can now move her. So she’s going to my lovely brother. Not to live with him but to a home near him which is opening up, quietly, bit by bit, and which specialises in dementia care. We were looking at next year but Bruv has to do the do during the school holidays and I should be there to help too. If I am going to have Christmas at Mum’s with her that means, the way our holidays and trips abroad fall, that it would be June 2024 before we could move her. Too late. We’ll have run out of cash. Or just after Christmas. Except, if I do that, it will have to be the first week in January or Bruv is back to work and as a teacher, with school holidays, he can’t really ask for time off during term time for this.

But … we are going to McOther’s folks in Scotland for New Year and we can’t cancel that because they are 5 hours away, they can’t travel and with Saturday school, holidays and half terms are the only times we can go.

So … the only other time is the beginning of the this school holidays … which means I needed to drop everything last weekend and belt up to Shrewsbury to look at the home, which was lovely, luckily. It was lovely to see Bruv, wife and kids too and heartening to meet the staff and see the home. I genuinely think Mum will be happy there.

Having given the home the green light, we’re moving her mid December. Then we have to clear the house and sell it. I have to do stuff like cancel the phone and broadband contracts and get the garage cleared (it’s full of stuff that belongs to someone else). Bruv and I have to decide a) who gets what and b) what we might sell to pay care fees.

It’s been interesting, as at one point I was looking to meld Mum’s broadband and phone into one. This would be £20 a month for both rather than £30 for each one. However, where the utilities (except the broadband) were all with one company; SSE, that company is now defunct so it all went to Ovum or OVO or whatever they are. They then divested themselves of the phone account to a company called Origin broadband. I rang Origin but in the long chain of passing accounts from one operator to another something has changed the account name. It’s no longer in Mum’s name it seems, or at least, when I gave the account number and they asked for my account name for ‘security’ and I gave mum’s name, as printed on their welcome letter, they said I had got it wrong. They asked for a title. There isn’t one so I said Mrs. That was not the correct salutation apparently. I then suggested ‘hello’ which is what it said on the welcome letter. That was also wrong. We tried two different spellings of Elisabeth; the way she spells it and the usual one but that wasn’t right either. So nobody at Origin can actually access my mother’s telephone account … because it’s not in her name. So that’s a joy to come when I try and cancel the phone.

Dealing with Origin I spoke to a lovely lady in South Africa (she used ‘just now’ and had the accent) and we did have quite a giggle about it as she tried 101 different permutations of Mum’s name to get in but we failed in our mission and she wasn’t able to help. We had to give up which is a little ominous.

I guess I just write to them and cancel the Direct Debit with the bank, but they are now dealt with by a call centre in India (even though Mum chose a special account specifically to have her telephone banking handled by a UK based call centre). The folks in Bombay or wherever it is are actually lovely but it’s a terrible line, a lot of them are really soft spoken so even I have trouble hearing them and they are far more interested a perfect administrative record than any meaningful customer service — jeez nobody does admin and minutia-driven bureaucracy like a this lot I wonder if they’re handling BT’s help line as well — so I’m not sure how far I’ll get with that.

Meanwhile, I’ve been getting vaguer and vaguer. I know dementia is my destiny but I was hoping not quite yet. Two weeks ago I bought an air plant in the market. I know I had it with me at the check out shortly afterwards in Marks & Spencer’s because I remember picking it up and taking it outside but somewhere between M&S and home I put down the bag it was in and failed to pick it up again. I literally don’t know where I lost it. I only remembered I’d bought it two weeks afterwards. Arnold’s pants. What a bell end.

In health news, because I am one eighth French, which means that if you ask me how I am I WILL tell you … I have finally been to the doctor properly about my aching hands and while I suspect they are a bit arthritic, the main problem is carpal tunnel. The sore arm I have been experiencing when metal detecting for the last year and a bit which has suddenly become permanently painful … that’s tennis elbow. So I’ve had that for over a year and the carpal tunnel since 2015.

Ah.

Nice to know I’ve been looking after myself. Mwahahahrgh!

On the upside, both those things can be fixed with physiotherapy. Excellent. So long as I haven’t fucked the hands up too badly in the intervening 7 years since they started. I had been to the doctor before about the hands but they said it was arthritis. My bad, though, I should have been more articulate about the type of pain. I didn’t really think about it until it got really bad. Then I realised it wasn’t responding to the same things as my arthritic bits do.

So that’s a joy. But hopefully a fixable one.

There are Christmas events too! Please do feel free to come and visit me at the St Edmundsbury Cathedral Christmas Fair on 23rd – 25th November, 2023. Woot. I will be the one dying on my arse while those around me sell stuff feverishly hand-over-fist. I’m busy prepping for this, I have to order some eyebombing calendars, a couple of books and some cards. I also have to decide whether I’m going to visit a local cafe, clean the mirror in their loos and take another photo of the eyebomb I did there so it looks better as a Christmas card than the picture I have already.

Picture of an ornate frame with eyes stuck on it so it looks like father Christmas

Oh ho ho

Right now it’s the spit of Father Christmas but you can really see the dust. I thought writing Oh-ho-ho! in red or drawing a silly hat on it might help. I dunno.

Events! Norcon! I never blogged about Norcon! It was fabulous this year. Sorry not to post. Although no Nigel Planer selfie this time because he wasn’t there. Pity as I loved his book and was hoping I could buttonhole him and tell him. It has a similar feel to mine, which was heartening. So yeh, would have loved to have talked to him about that. Never mind. Can’t win ‘em all. Maybe next year. I sold a lot of books though, at pre covid levels. Which was lovely.

Ditto McMini’s most recent gig. Jeepers but he has gigs springing up like mushrooms all over East Anglia, including a Friday here and another on the next night in Norwich which will be a bit hard core for his perennially knackered 55 year old mother even if it will be fun. I should add that I sell the merch so it’s like doing a small event. I’ll get used to it though and the last gig I went home to entertain dinner guests and other people sold the merch for me!

Where was I? Oh yes. Events. A few weeks after Norcon it was time to take part in the first ever Fringe Literary Festival, here in our very own Bury St Edmunds. They had a short story completion: Fast Forward, for flash fiction up to 500 words. I put the start of an incomplete series in (one of the many things I’ve managed to get half way through but is now too complicated to complete until the emotional load is lighter than it is now). OK I condensed it a lot but if you want to listen, it’s here. Although there’s a lot of background noise. Sorry about that but the stories were read out in venues around Bury which was brilliant but less easy to record cleanly. Not that it mattered! As always, I was stoked to hear it read out. Here it is anyway.

So there you have it. Things are very, very hectic. I have a talk about burnout on 7th December. I’ve been working on it all year and I am cautiously optimistic that I will get it done in time but it’s tough because I’m … well … burned out. Mwahahrgh! Even more burned out than usual! As for writing, have I written anything new? Have I bollocks? Sigh. Maybe LIFE will fuck off for a bit next year and I’ll get a chance.

Ho hum, onwards and upwards? How have you been this last three months?

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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.

picture of a wallet case for a phone

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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5 Mar 2023 · 6:02 pm

The chaos fairies … just for a smecking change

Holy shizz, this has been a hell of a week. But there have been successes among the rampant chaos. As you know, if you read this regularly, the chaos fairies frequently play havoc with my life. They’re dogged little bastards and their latest escapades have been more than a little annoying. Yes, it’s time for the Insurance Story.

OK, so I insure my car because if I don’t then, in this country, it’s illegal. I am under no illusions that it will be easy wresting any cash from the most compliant and efficient insurance company should anything happen. I drive a completely stupid car. I admit it. It’s this car.

The thing about this car is that it has a tiny, teeny little 1.6 toyota yaris engine. It does 40mpg. But it goes from 0-60 in an excitingly short length of time, even if it’s 6 seconds rather than 4. It also goes from 60 to quite a lot more in a similarly short, blink-of-an-eye type of time. That makes it fun to drive but reasonably straightforward to insure. Cos … small engine. You know … 

Another one of its advantages is that it’s mostly made of aluminium, carbon fibre and fibreglass. This is great from the point of view of it not rusting and many bits of it degrading more slowly than normal cars. On the downside, if you prang the fibreglass it is an absolute bastard to fix. That means that, ideally, you need a fibreglass specialist rather than the lowest bidding contractor.

A few weeks ago, somebody backed into me at Tesco’s filling station (it’s always bloody Tesco’s filling station). I’m pretty sure this is not news to anyone, I think I mentioned it. The result is a couple of cracks in the wheel arch. The chap wanted to pay for it himself but I explained that it would be expensive and when I showed him the quote he did, indeed, have conniptions so I contacted my insurance company.

The insurers are a bunch called Geoffrey. The main call centre I am dealing with there is the most lovely bunch of folks up in the North East somewhere. So far I’ve spoken mostly to people with Geordie, Middlesbrough, County Durham or Northumberland accents and one Scottish lady. They are uber helpful and respond magnificently to humour, which is fairly essential when someone’s backed into your car. I cannot praise them highly enough. I always try to be decent to call centre staff, even if I’ve been waiting a while, because they’re just people and often, if you’re even remotely decent to them, they will respond warmly and make that extra effort to help you.

OK, so, like most companies these days, Geoffrey, itself, is really a sales and marketing company, they contract out the hire car side to Enterprise Rental Car, the nitty gritty of organising the work to be done is contracted out to a bunch called Incident Management Solutions, and the policy is underwritten by a company called Markerstudy. This is how capitalism works. Indeed, having worked for National Express, which contracts the nitty gritty of running many, many routes to other operators, this sort of thing is pretty standard. I understand that.

Fibreglass is an absolute bastard to repair. 

I think I mentioned that. 

This being the case, I usually ask if I can use my own repairer. I did have to use the insurance company’s repair service once. They were a decent lot. They did the bodywork on some of the vehicles at the coach company I worked for at the time. However, they didn’t get the paint curing right on the fibreglass and the first time I passed a gritter the newly re sprayed front of my previous car ended up pitted with white holes. 

Most insurers are more than happy for me to use a local Lotus specialist. Geoffrey, and then Enterprise, said they were fine with it. They just had to agree terms with the mechanic. The guy who fixes my car is extremely competitively priced. Furthermore, he knew he could fix this without replacing the whole front of the car. He also knows that many companies will automatically say they’re going to replace the entire front, but often end up not doing so. The difference being a quote for the work without changing the front is about £800 and it’s about £1,500 for the parts from anyone else.

Gerald, that’s his name, is the most honest person you could happen to meet, likewise his colleague Neil. These guys are not ones to charge more than the price of gold for the oil used in an oil change. Small bolts and washers do not miraculously become £10 on their bills unless they’ve had to buy them for that from Lotus. They are also really, and I mean really good at fixing weird niggles. It’s a Lotus and it gets lots of weird niggles. And if there are two options and one is cheaper, they will advise you to take the cheaper one if it’ll work just as well. 

As a result, GST, that’s the company name, is well in demand so I rang them and provisionally booked a slot for the work while I was on holiday. Then I broke the back of my car, which I am not claiming for because the work would cost about the same as my excess and we agreed they’d fix that at the same time.

Someone rang GST to negotiate but they couldn’t get hold of them. When they called back it rang out or a message said the call handlers were all busy. GST have better things to do with their time so I rang Geoffrey, who put me through to Incident Management Solutions. I waited for … quite a long time … and got hold of someone who was able to give me a direct line for GST to call which I passed on and all was well …

Except it wasn’t. Because GST’s hourly labour rates were too high. I’m not sure how because their labour rates are, quite frankly, lower than pretty much anyone’s. Also, the time they were doing the work meant that there was no need for a hire car, so no cost there, and of course, they hadn’t said it would need a new nose cone so that was a few grand off the ticket right there, too. 

Yes, but the labour rates were too high. They needed to reduce another 8% before VAT and pay a £20 admin fee to be in with a shout … 

So basically, as I understood it, if GST had committed fraud, by quoting for a new nose cone to up the price, but not fitting one, so they could then reduce  their labour rates to £25 an hour, or whatever it was that was stipulated in the rules, they’d have got the job even though it would have cost the insurance company more money.

That’s fucking bats. This might be the world of capitalism but that’s Nationalised Industry levels of mental, pointless, hoops, rules and inefficiency right there.

Yes I was fucked off.

Anyway, I rang Incident Management Solutions and asked what I could do to get GST in with a shout and they explained that basically, nothing. I’d have to go with their approved repairer. I knew from the bumpf I’d received that Markerstudy, who underwrote my policy, were prepared to allow me to use my own repairer. I was advised that I should go back to the insurer, which I did and they, in turn, advised me that now I would have to go direct to the underwriter.

My first call to Markerstudy, I was put through directly from Geoffrey (the insurers) to the new claims department, because they weren’t sure Markerstudy would have all the paperwork yet. I spoke to a lady who had an accent like Gina Ahluwalia when she’s doing an impression of her mum. She explained that they had the paperwork and that she’d put me onto the existing claims department. Markerstudy don’t tell you where you are in the queue so after 45 minutes I reckoned something must have gone wrong and hung up.

I tried again but this time I got a menu and chose existing claims, I then got another menu of items, none of which applied to my situation, so I chose 7 ‘anything else’. I’m not sure if it was a bad line or the guy at the other end didn’t seem to speak much English and certainly couldn’t understand mine. I explained what had happened.

‘So you had an accident that was your fault?’

‘No, it was the other guy’s fault.’

‘So you want to use our approved repairers?’

‘No. I don’t. I want to use my own.’

‘I will put you through to the existing claims department.’

‘Hang on, you are the existing claims department. I chose existing claims from the menu.’

‘No this is not existing claims.’

‘It should be. Honest. I picked existing claims. Then I got a menu of seven options, none of which applied to me so I chose number 7 for “anything else”. Please can you tell me what item on the menu I should choose to get put through to the existing claims department straight away.’

‘What were the menu options?’

‘I can’t remember them all but there definitely wasn’t one for using my own repairer.’

‘Then ma’am may I suggest that next time you listen to the menu carefully, then you can select the right department.’

‘Why thank you for your advice, which wasn’t condescending at all,’ I told him sweetly.

‘No problem ma’am,’ oh. I made a mental note that, clearly he’s immune to sarcasm. ‘I will put you through to the existing claims department now, yes? I am putting you through now?’

‘Yes, you may as well.’

Another heaven knows how long on hold. I started this at 10.00 am and it was getting on for 12.00 now. I was due out to lunch with a friend in 20 minutes. I decided I’d try again because no-one’s answering and knowing my luck it’d go back to the beginning and I’d end up talking to this bloke again. This time I wrote down all the menu options and chose number 3, ‘I wish to use our approved repairer.’

I got through to another man with an equally strong Nigerian accent. 

‘I will put you through to the right department,’ he said after I’d explained my predicament.

‘But … I chose “existing claims” and then “I wish to use our approved repairer” how can I be at the wrong department?’

After a long conversation like those ones you have on holiday when they only speak a few words of English and you only speak a few words of their language, except I didn’t speak any of his language at all, he basically told me that he was in a kind of triage area where they answered the phone and then put people into the queue for the relevant department. In short the menu was an irrelevant and pointless waste of time. So that was grand.

I thanked him, and as it was 12.20, and I was due to meet my friend at half past, I told him I’d ring back later.

Later that day at 4.30, I arrived home. I googled Markerstudy reviews. I invite you to do the same. There are some 5 star ones, from people who are chuffed their insurance is so cheap and there are the others, which are all 1 star, from people trying to make a claim. A big red flag for me was how many people in non-fault accidents had ended up paying their excess anyway and how many people had to involve the ombudsmen, or lawyers, to get the faintest sniff of their money. Others; more people than I was comfortable with, ranted at what a shower the approved repairers were and how comprehensively they cocked it up.

Shit. I needed something between these people and me. Also, my excess is just shy of £300. It was definitely worth paying the difference.

I rang Geoffrey Insurance and explained that I really didn’t want to go direct to Markerstudy. They spoke to Enterprise and managed to get them to agree to reopen my case if I promised to go with their own insurers. Then I rang Gerald at GST and told him to agree to whatever they asked and that I’d pay the difference. Then it was supper time.

The next morning, bright and early, I rang Geoffrey and asked for advice. Had anyone ever paid part of the claim? The lovely geordie I spoke to said I could but ask although he’d never heard of it happening and that I’d been very lucky that they’d agreed to take my claim back after closing the file.

Back to Incident Management Solutions. Number 9 in the queue this time and only fifteen minutes or so on hold. I got a lady who sounded really bored and pissed off, but she thawed considerably over our conversation and turned out to have a wonderful droll sense of humour and the bored sounding delivery transpired to be mis diagnosed laconic. She was great. I explained that I was going to pay the difference. She said that was unfair because the accident wasn’t my fault. I explained about the reviews of Markerstudy online and that I thought it was probably cheaper in the long run. She therefore made it all official by ringing GST while I was on the phone, and then confirmed that yes, they would be doing the work. Halle-fucking-luja!

This also means that they can fix some other niggles on my car for that tiny bit less because they already have it for the insurance claim, and since I’ll be on holiday at the time they’ll have it for two weeks so there won’t be the same time constraint.

I can’t help thinking that this experience represents a kind of Livy’s circle of capitalism. These days, the customer is no longer king, it’s the shareholder. Doubtless Markersure is worth billions and doing really well on the stock market because they are buying everything that moves. At ground level, that rapid expansion, which, most likely means buying a company, firing the staff routing the calls to their own call centre and piling the load for their sales advisors, rather than employing any more, results in absolutely shit customer service, but that doesn’t matter, because it’s expanding, so the shareholders still get a bonus, and it’s still a ‘successful’ company even if it’s running at a loss. (Did you know that Spotify has never made a profit?)

The cumbersome nature of behemoths, generally, coupled with all the petty, box-ticking dos and don’ts by which decisions are made within them is so very similar to the aspects of nationalised industries in the 1970s that were crap. It’s all about box ticking, rather than any form of logic or business acumen at ground level. Stuff I read about British Leyland in the 1970s and 80s and other examples of the worst inefficiencies of Britain’s nationalised industries in the that period echoes through all my experiences with modern help desks and call centres. Not to mention our government bodies now. 

Take the NHS, everything contracted out, nobody has agency … remember the problem I had getting them to deliver Mum home? The transport people box ticking, no tick, no delivery; Mum is taken home to her house and then back to hospital again. The ward administrator is livid but can do nothing because the drivers don’t answer to her and in the long run, neither does the transport company. They’re the lowest bidder so however shit the service, they’ll always get the job. All those double journeys and mistakes … is it any cheaper than organising it in house? Probably not.

So we have this weird situation where, as far as the customer is concerned, the down-to-earth, nitty-gritty of dealing with capitalism is exactly the same as dealing with a government department or everything that was shit about nationalised companies. Because it turns out that one behemoth—be it the passport office, the NHS, Google, Audible or Markersure—is very like another. Just as governments are often, flabby, inflexible and inefficient because they’re massive and complicated; so companies, when they reach the same size as a small country, seem to become the same. Full of illogical conflicting rules and guidelines that hinder rather than help. A culture of box ticking and back covering rather than actual action or customer service. But what do they care? They own their markets andtheir consumers have no choice, right? Except no. We do. It’s more difficult sometimes but we have to think about it.

There we go then.

Caveat emptor.

Check who underwrites your insurance. If it’s Markersure steer well clear.

Which leads me onto this … A few days ago someone on Facebook shared this quote from Ursula LeGuin.

‘We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art – the art of words.’

What interested me was people’s reactions. They got all democrat and republican about it. The internet is rather Little America, after all. Lots of people saying yah boo you leftie twat! You think communism (that’s what the Americans call socialism) is better do you? You think shitty inefficient communism crushing our freedoms is better do you? etc.

But it strikes me that shitty inefficient communism was exactly like the events I’ve just described. I have Mondays and Fridays, along with some Thursdays to write. The simple job of getting my insurance claim sorted out took me all my spare time on all three of those days. Obviously, the post of Ursula LeGuin’s words being on Facebook, and having seen it once, I’ll never find it again. Facebook doesn’t want you thinking about stuff before going back to make a measured response. But that’s the whole point isn’t it? Keep the customers busy doing pointless shit and they won’t notice how shit you are. They’ll be too busy concentrating on the pebbles on the path to look up and see just how shit the view has become.

Except some of us do look up. We see their shite. We so, so do.

Everything right now, at every level of life, is about box ticking, arse-covering, bureaucratic pissyness. Nothing is about what might work, what is logical, what is sensible and certainly, never, never, ever about about what is right. That’s why my parents have paid three quarters of a million quid in care fees and we will be pursued to the ends of the earth if Mum is deemed to have tried to give anything away to us—you know, so we have something to inherit the way she and Dad would have wanted, for example—rather than paying it all on care fees the government promised them it would pay, before pulling the rug from under them and a whole generation of people when it was too late for them to act.

I don’t know what the answer is but it might be in here. If you haven’t read this book, read it right now. It makes so much sense of the way modern business and modern life runs.

Is religion such a bad thing done the right way, you know, so it gives people principles? If today’s help-yourself-and-bollocks-to-the-rest-of-them society is anything to go by, some kind of belief system — other than ‘I want it all’ might be worth having.

And finally … once again, here’s a chance to grab 12 hours of fabulous audiophonic joy for 99p (or 99c)

Yes. If you like cheap audio books, Few Are Chosen is on sale for all of March. 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

 

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