The Chanting Hordes return for Hallowe'en

"It's All Hallow's Eve, Geoffrey, when the dead rise from the grave and walk the earth."

"Brilliant. When's it over?"

"Don't be negative. I think we should just go with the gloomy vibe, Geoffrey. Let's kill everyone."

"Right. How will we do that?"

"We'll dig a big huge pit, and put lots of sharp sticks in it, pointy end up. Then we'll lure them all in, to their deaths."

"We can't possibly do that. It's a terrible plan."

"Why?"

"Because I can't be arsed sharpening sticks for hours on end. Besides, Who's "them"? And how would we lure them in, precisely?"

"Put a plate of sausage rolls and a coconut sponge in the middle. They'd all run for that willy nilly and without so much as a by your leave. Result. To be honest I don't know who "they" are though. You've got a "point" there. Ha ha. Oh dear - what's that awful moaning, wailing, dragging sound?"

"I think we MIGHT be about to find out....the chanting, puffa jacket-wearing hordes are back (see previous posts)...and they're heading our way. You get sharpening and I'll start digging - we've not got a second to lose - HURRY!!!!"

New Flash Story just out on Shortbread Stories

My latest flash fiction piece, Set Meal for Two, has just gone live over on Shortbread Stories
It's about two nasty warring "thespians" out for a meal. You can, as usual, find it via that link or read it via the Shortbread widget on the right hand side of the blog.

Sailing - a peom from Geoffrey

Sailing - a peom.

I want to voyage westwards
Into the setting sun
I want to live on apples
And mushrooms on a bun.

I want my boat to sail and sail
And never spring a leak
I want to sail forever
And never have to speak.

Bloggered Off

I'm pretty busy writing other stuff, hence the lack of blog posts this week. Here's some of the stuff I'm working on at the moment.
Psychotweeter part three (part two is in the editing queue over on Shortbread Stories)
A short story which I hope to get done in time for a competition deadline.
A flash fiction piece which I hope to submit "somewhere".
And my Kindle. Hope to get my finger out and get that organised "soon". I must say the technology aspects are putting me off a lot, but I've had some excellent advice from others who've Kindled, and I'm sure I can manage it if I really knuckle down.
Therefore, I don't have much time to blog at the moment.

However, if anyone wishes to contact me to discuss using my finely-honed writing and blogging skills, fine. I'm delighted to consider anything, pretty much. Especially if I'm going to be paid. And if you aren't in a position to pay, then at least have the decency to be extremely grateful, don't take me for granted, and treat me with respect and appreciation. Oh and have plenty biscuits - the good kind. Otherwise, there is absolutely no way I'll want to be involved.
I will consider doing stuff for nothing, if it interests me sufficiently, but I'm well past the stage in life where I'm prepared to be a virtual "intern." It's just not worth it.

The Story of the Old, Empty Barn

It's not "we're all doomed!" but it's good.

Ego? forget it.

I'm interested in tidal patterns - neap, high springs, syzygy and so forth, and was doing a search. "Tides are the rise and fall of sea levels, caused by the combined effects of the gravitational forces exerted by the Moon and the Sun, and the rotation of the Earth." (from wikipedia)

Oh - syzygy. Yes. Quite. Well, it will take your mind off the price of gas, mince, biscuits, apples - everything, really. For a while.

What price your tiny little ego? I mean, not just yours, mine as well...

Is Everything an Illusion, and do we have souls?

"Are we safe?"
"No, of course not. Nobody's ever safe. You know that as well as I do. The membrane between life and Death is as fine as the caul on a new-born babe."
"Here we are, sitting comfortably by the fire, just had our supper, everything secure..."
"That's all by the by. Security is an illusion. The material world, as we perceive it, is an illusion. We - and I use the term merely because I can't think of another at the moment - are a collection - a confluence -of energy particles in a condition of flux. In fact, the only permanence, the only security, is flux."
"Is everything random then? Or is there an overall pattern? Look at that piece of driftwood for example. You can see how it's been shaped by its journey through the world. Where did it come from? We can only wonder. It was part of a tree, obviously. But was it part of the trunk, or a branch that fell off during a storm? Was it uprooted by a landslide, swept down to an estuary by a flooded river, and borne far out to sea on a Spring tide?"
"And then washed ashore and left high and dry by the ebb, ready for us to gather for our fire."
"Is that random? is it coincidence, or was it meant to be? And it's riddled with termite holes. It supported life, even in Death - like the story of the lion in the Bible."
"It's still supporting life. It's keeping us warm."
"I don't want to burn it now! I've grown fond of it now that I know it better. It seems like more than just a piece of wood. It's got a soul. I don't want to see it burning up and turning into ashes before my very eyes."
"Happens to us all Geoffrey. Might as well bite the bullet and face it."
"Do you think trees have souls Tuppy? Do WE have souls, come to that?"
"Trees probably do have them. You've probably got one. If not your own one, then somebody else's. I've not got one - I swapped mine a while back, for some decent sausages, remember? I did a deal with Death. I was starving. Well, peckish."
"Do you regret it now, even just a little bit?"
"No, can't say I do Geoffrey. I didn't know I had it in the first place."

The Ladykillers "Such pretty windows."

Mrs Wilberforce aka Katie Johnson, and Alec Guinness resplendent in his wig and teeth. Marvellous.

Byron on Reviews

Anyone out there worried about reviews?
Here's Byron's take on them.
(It just occurs to me that I hate that expression "take on such and such").
OK. Here's Byron's OPINION/THOUGHTS/WHATEVER.  On them. Or of them.  I'm not quite sure.  Reviews, anyway. 
As expressed in a letter he wrote to Shelley in 1821, following the death of Keats (I'm nothing if not hip 'n' happening). I gather that Shelley must have informed him of the death, and that it had been perhaps hastened or even caused by distress about bad reviews. Keats died of consumption, and I suppose state of mind could certainly have affected his physical resilience, as of course it can with any illness.
Bear in mind that Byron himself had recently described Keats' poems as a kind of "mental masturbation" and a "Bedlam vision brought on by too much raw pork and opium". (see my post from a day or two back). Personally, I might take that as a compliment. But I'm not Keats, am I? He was aiming for the sublime.
And it occurs to me - how much raw pork is "too much", exactly? And why would you eat it, in any quantity? I've eaten underdone chops before, and felt a bit 'dicky' after, but it was entirely accidental and I wouldn't say they were 'raw', quite.  More on that later.
To continue.
Byron writes to Shelley, "I am very sorry to hear what you say of Keats - is it actually true? I did not think criticism had been so killing....I read the review of Endymion in The Quarterly. It was severe, - but surely not so severe as many reviews in that and other journals upon others.
I recollect the effect on me of the Edinburgh on my first poem; it was rage, and resistance, and redress - but not despondency nor despair. I grant that these are not amiable feelings; but in this world of bustle and broil, and especially in the career of writing, a man should calculate upon his powers of resistance before he goes into the arena.
"Expect not life from pain nor danger free,
Nor deem the doom of man reversed for thee."

Hmm... he's got a point - but he's being more than a tad harsh, I'd say. One of the critics had described Endymion as a work of imperturbable, drivelling idiocy. Someone else who sounded like a towering snob had advised the non-Eton/Harrow educated Keats to abandon poetry and go back to his work as an apothecary.

All very well for his Lordship, swimming up and down the Grand Canal with his menagerie and his club foot and all.

So if anyone derides my - or your - work, do remember that they were wrong about Keats.

The genius of Colette

My all-time favourite writer is Colette.

I love how she lived her life, and I love that her writing - and she was so prolific - reflects it.

I don't really like the Cherie/Colette Willy stage. I love her later work though, when she'd broken out of that first stifling marriage. I say stifling, but perhaps what came out of those years of writing servitude was the development of her own superb writing discipline.

I have a couple of favourite stories. One is The Kepi. I'm totally fixated on the ageing female at the moment (being one myself) and for me this encapsulates a certain stage in life that cannot be glossed over or denied. The thing I like best about Colette is that she doesn't flinch.

Another favourite is her novella The Cat. Colette writes superbly about cats and they feature in many of her tales. She doesn't anthropomorphise, but they are just as important as characters in her stories as humans. In The Cat, a woman becomes furiously jealous of her lover's cat. And to be honest, you can understand why. Can one be too "fond of animals"? Personally, I think not, but many people would disagree, and in this complex tale there is a distinct whiff of the unsavoury about their relationship. The cat is also a symbol of his lost childhood and independence and his uncertainties as he hovers on the brink of family life. The woman will never possess him until the cat goes. And the cat, Saha, has no intention of letting that happen - not while she knows she is still loved.

Here's a quote. "Alain looked up; nine stories up, in the middle of the almost round moon, the little horned shadow of a cat was leaning forward, waiting."

"A small shadowy blue shape, outlined like a cloud with a hem of silver, sitting on the dizzy edge of the night..."

"...at the age where he might have coveted a little car, a journey abroad....Alain nevertheless remained the-young-man-who-has-bought-a-little-cat."

"Saha's beautful yellow eyes, in which the great nocturnal pupil was slowly invading the iris, stared into space, picking out moving, floating, invisible points."

Rick Wakeman - Excerpts From The Six Wives Of Henry VIII

Aaarrgghh! I said I'd post more prog and for me this just screams PRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRO-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
In a very loud voice.
Actually, it's not that bad when you listen to it (it gets unbearable after 3 mins. though - you have been warned). Well, not quite as bad as you'd reasonably expect given the size of his "equipment", the length and weird silkiness of his hair, and the *gulp* cape. I think Wakers now lives on the Isle of frigging Man and likes a game of golf FFS.
Rock ON!!!!!

Another quote of the day - Byron

Presently re-reading Byron - A Self-Portrait, edited by Peter Quennell.

It's a brilliant read. Really fresh and entertaining. It's a collection of letters and diaries, and is never, ever dull. You get accounts in his own words of the famous drinking out of a skull, the menagerie, the countless love affairs, Shelley's death, the lot.

Here's an interesting excerpt from a letter he wrote to legendary publisher John Murray.

"Mr Keats, whose poetry you enquire after, appears to me what I have already said: such writing is a sort of mental masturbation....neither poetry nor anything else but a Bedlam vision produced by raw pork and opium."

Raw pork??

And "I have been reading Grimm's correspondence. He repeats frequently, in speaking of a poet, or a man of genius in any department.......that he must have une ame qui se tourmante, un esprit violent. How far this may be true I know not; but if it were, I should be a poet "per excellenza"; for I have always had une ame, which not only tormented itself but everybody else in contact with it; and un esprit violent, which has almost left me without any esprit at all.

Great reading.

Quote of the day

"The word is not the thing, but a flash in whose light we perceive the thing." (Diderot)

Ramble On - Led Zeppelin

The ultimate autumn song. Leaves are falling all around, etc..
Far, far better band than the Beatles, in every respect.
Compare the present day Robert Plant to McCartney. I think I need say no more.

Shortbread Stories

I have another piece of flash fiction that's just gone live over on Shortbread Stories.

Click here to find it.