More baby news

Yesterday, our son slept more than he has ever slept before in his life. From 12.30pm through till 4.30pm he was asleep. He woke up for a feed but hardly took any milk. He only had a slightly wet nappy. He got really hot at about 5pm so we stripped him down and gave him a dose of Calpol.

By 5.30pm he was asleep again. We assumed that he would wake up again in a few hours for a proper feed and that we would not get much sleep at all. By 11pm he was still fast asleep and I couldn't get him to wake up. We forced him to swallow some water using a syringe and called the 24hr NHS line. A nurse told us he was probably okay and what we needed to look out for.

She got the local out of hours doctors to come round. He arrived at about 1.30am, by which time the cheeky little monkey had woken up, had two proper wet nappies and drunk a HUGE amount of milk!

We were so relieved. The doctor gave him the all clear after checking him out. So grateful to those doctors!

He's been great today and is now playing on his activity mat. He's so happy now. Lovely.

But his mum and I are now exhausted. Thank the gods that he's okay.

The last dram of them all

I finished my whisky last night *sobs*

There were only two doubles left in there and these slipped down my throat far too swiftly while watching the always crass and vapid X-Factor. Dear gods, how could they have saved Ash? Let's face it, the boy is tone-deaf, has zero personality and looks like a lollipop that has been rolled in a deep shag-pile carpet! But it was clear from the judges comments when he had finished his performance that he has been groomed, so they say, to win. Just like with that nob-jockey Shane Ward from the last series!

I'm not hung-over. Honest.

Mmmm, coffee.

Acorn

Well, the landlord's painter and decorator had gone to the wrong house. He arrived eventually, took a glance at the mould and said he'd need to repaint the room. Well, DUH! The walls will need cleaning and repainting with anti-mould paint. I could have told them that! Still waiting for the landlord to contact us to arrange a date for that work to be done. Bah!

So anyway, I was going to explain why the car is called Acorn. When we bought her, she squeaked a fair amount. The clutch pedal squeaks with every depression and the brakes squeaked (brake pads have now been replaced).

What, you could be forgiven for asking, has squeaking got to do with Acorns?

Well, there's a certain Disney cartoon, The Emperor's New Groove, the final lines of which are: "you owe me one acorn: sqeak squeaker squeak squeakum". If you haven't seen this film yet, go out and obtain a copy. It is the funniest thing I have ever seen and in it can be found the answers to all of life's problems.

Two summers ago, back in the day when certain funghi were legal, we watched this film after eating some tasty Hawaiian blues and laughed so hard it hurt. We then tried to eat cornettos but they kept waving around and bending away from our mouths so we had to give up! A real hoota-doodle-doo! Of course, then the British government decided that wee mushrooms that grow absolutely everywhere in the autumn time just had to be declared a class A because of course they taste so nice that if you didn't do that people would spend all their time eating them and jumping off bridges and buildings convinced they can fly!

But in any case, the scene had been set for us to know the script of the Groove by heart, and when we bought this old banger and it squeaked and squealed all the way down the road, we just had to name her Acorn.

Sqeak squeaker squeak squeakum!

Garr, landlord's ahoy

Isn't it just typical?

When we moved into this property five months ago, we didn't have keys for the windows and it took four phone calls and a week and a half to get someone to come round and get us a key.

Then, in the height of summer, ants came up through cracks in the parquet by an internal door and made their way up to the windows to fly off in a mating frenzy! That took three phone calls and we were told to use ant-spray (with a pregnant lady and two cats in the property)! They came a week later to seal up the gap!

Now, towards the end of our tenancy, when they have already served us a notice to quit in a surprisingly aggressive and officous manner, the weather has changed and mold has appeared on the back wall. We called them two days ago. It was arranged yesterday that someone would come on Friday before 12 midday. And I got a call a few minutes ago to tell me the decorator was 30 seconds away and was on his way over.

Peter, of course, chose that moment to start screaming for a feed, and now we are still waiting for the workman to show up!

I was going to use this post to talk about vaccinations and Acorn the car, but that will have to wait for the next post now!

So long, for now!

Nursey nursey

Well, our little man had his first round of vaccinations yesterday. We had such a rough night as he was soooooooo cranky! I tried to tell him that one day he'll be chasing nurses around, but he was not really in the mood for listening.

Blah!

Rough Night

My perfect little man, my special baby boy, has got to go to the doctor today for his eight week jabs!

We are not looking forward to this. I've been up since about 5 this morning and couldn't get back to sleep for worrying about it. I know it's for a good reason, but I'm not going to enjoy watching some callous NHS doctor inserting a needle into my son's arm!

It was bad enough when the doctor checked him out following the birth. He didn't like being prodded and twisted and weighed and so on. Poor little guy. And he's certainly not going to like this today!

He went to sleep really early last night as well. We woke him up for a feed when we went to bed in the hopes that we'd still get some decent sleep. My wife told me this morning that she got up again as she couldn't get to sleep so she would only have had an hour or two of sleep when he woke up for a feed in the wee small hours. Then again in the early morning she was looking so damn tired. I think they are going to need lots of cuddles today!

It's raining, it's pouring, the old man is snoring

Well, apparently it's true: I snore. Seeing as both my son and my wife snore as well, I hardly see why I should receive complaints.

At least, that would be my valid argument if it weren't also true that I snore when I'm awake. Which it is.

Ah well.

Can't believe the torrential rain this morning. It's been such a mild autumn so far and then all of October's rain arrived at once. The drains couldn't keep up with it and the car nearly drowned!

Poor Acorn (I'll explain the car's name another time). We had just left Asda, bubba in the car seat wailing his head off because ... well, just because. There seems to be an inverse ratio between the weather and the care with which others choose to drive so that it was exceedingly hazardous to attempt the journey to St Austell market.

Biscuits, however, were calling, so off we went. Acorn had a dip in a disturbingly deep puddle so that she kept trying to stall on me all the way there. It only happened as I was slowing down in second gear for roundabouts or turns, but it was scary nonetheless.

We made it, however, and braved the madness that is St Austell market on a Sunday.

Thank the sparkly angels we're home, that's all I can say.

Well, better get off. One of the cats is resting his head on my wrist and I'm getting cramp trying to type.

Cheery-bye.

Day Two: Bloggilicious

Writing down my dilemma yesterday helped me to focus on the problem. I now know what to do, and have in fact begun.

Heng is the project closest to completion. It fits in the thriller genre if I remove the frankly unneccessary Sci-Fi moments. This is the genre most of my work falls into, and it is one in which slightly futurisitic inventions are quite welcome. The fantasy work will take years to perfect and my surreal fiction can wait till I'm established.

I want to make it in the big bad world of publishing - I'd better think about the fact I'm manufacturing a product for commercial consumption!

Here's a short excerpt from the first chapter:

Frank sighed and wiped a bead of sweat away from his brow.
As the door closed with a quiet click behind him, Frank noticed how damp his palms were.
“One more thing for her notebook,” he said quietly to himself, smiling at the irony.
Frank made his way across the wildly patterned floor to the front entrance. The door was of a heavy wood, thick and reassuring in its bulk. It took all of his remaining strength to push his way through.
Once on the porch, he took out his own cigarettes, lighting one to calm his nerves. It was cold outside, the air thin and crisp with the onset of evening. Some of the trees before him shivered nakedly, their leaves having abandoned them for the winter. Most, however, still bore their glorious plumages to form a richly textured green that encompassed his horizon.
Blowing a lungful of smoke out into a billowing halo around his head, he started off for the car park, gravel crunching under foot with every step. The narrow path meandered slowly through the wizened grove, emerging at last beside a moderate lake whose surface was pockmarked with quacking ducks, crying gulls and hissing swans.
A handful of dour patients, brows knitted in concentration, hurled fragments of bread at the fowl, emulating a game of darts in their innocently uncomprehending enthusiasm. Around the lake were scattered the occasional wooden benches, their thin wooden slats ill suited for protracted periods of contemplation. Not that this was, in itself, a great surprise, for who would go to any length to encourage a madman to investigate his thoughts too closely?
For Frank it was an inconvenience. Many a fine day would leave him wanting just such a soft-focus spot in which to relax. Forced away by the unwelcoming hardness of the seats, however, he would proceed in his unhurried gait towards the awaiting interior of his car, an ancient thing now in its own peculiar way.
There was one patron of the hospital, however, who found comfort in the stern chill of the benches. He would sit, back as rigid as could be, as his silver flecked beard bristled in the breeze.
Frank could not have shared more that a handful of brief conversations with this man in all the time he’d walked these grounds. As his encounter with Dr Chang ran round and round in his head, however, Frank found himself slumping down in the space next to the inmate.
Perhaps the old man had beckoned him over. Frank did not know. He looked down at his hands to check they were clean before offering the man a smoke.
“Thanks, son, but no.”
The old man’s eyes watered in the chill, rimmed red all round, deep sleepless bruises sagging beneath like piles of unclaimed baggage. At this close range, Frank could see the mottled teeth, the gangrenous gaps, the bulbous nose from which coarse dark hairs sprouted like cress, the specks of food within the beard, the hard edged apple that bobbed ungainly whenever the urge to swallow demanded it. The ears were large and equally hairy, the one closest to Frank sagging slightly where a long-tarnished silver ring had sat for countless years.
“Yes, it is a good day,” the patient replied, although Frank was sure he had not yet said a word. “I like it here. The walls are hidden in the garden.”
“There aren’t any walls out here,” Frank countered.
“Not the pale green things in there. I don’t mean the walls in there.” The old man’s voice was impatient. “The walls in there are plain enough. You can always see the walls in there. Out here, the walls are different. Even the ducks can’t fly over them and they’re good at flying. Like the seagulls. They can fly well too. But even they can’t get over the walls. The walls are everywhere.”
“Why? I can’t see them.” Frank exhaled quietly, tossing his cigarette into the undergrowth.
“You can’t see them!” The tone was sarcastic. “I can’t see them. The seagulls can’t see them. Why do you think we can’t get passed them? They are all one. The walls are the wall. It is everywhere. We can’t get passed it. Only through it. And you can’t come back.”
The old man’s voice had become increasingly sad and he sniffed noisily before retrieving Frank’s cigarette butt. There was still a small amount smouldering and the man took a couple of tight pulls before the ash crumpled into his lap. All that was left was the grubby filter, which he pocketed with a conspiratorial wink.
“You can have a whole one, if you want.”
“Thanks, son, but no.”
Frank shook his head in disgust as he moved to stand up, but the man put a grubby hand on his sleeve.
“No, wait,” he hissed. “Don’t go yet, son. We haven’t gotten to the good bit, yet.”

Fit the first

So, this is blogging.

What fun.

To begin: I'm an author, currently unpublished. I have a number of different ideas, some a fair way along on the way to being worked out and others still in the perpetually formless mind-smog of the creator-gods.

Hail Cerridwen!

Thing is, I wrote a novella that I foolishly called 'TK+'. Not particlarly well-written, but I did create it when I was only young. That fitted into the 'thriller' genre and with a little work on the editing front, could make a good novel.

After a couple of years I wrote a self-exploratory (read self-indulgent!) artsy-novel called 'La Reponse'. Again, with some work this could be a good piece of work.

I then created a tale called 'Heng' in the thriller genre with elements of Sci-Fi. By then my writing style was beginning to settle in to it's own space, but my focus appeared to loosen after 60,000 words and the ending feels rushed. I need to sit down and work through the tale to fix the problems and it'll be a cracking yarn!

After a year I began work on a thriller piece and almost simultaneously a fantasy-genre piece. I love the thriller tale and have the story pretty much worked out. The first part of the fantasy tale is all worked out, chapter structures all mapped and large swathes already written. All I need to do is sit down and finish the damned thing!

I've also got an idea for a straighforward commercial novel that is on the tip of my keyboard, not to mention more thriller, more Sci-Fi and more fantasy ideas stored away (one even from idle days at school spent day dreaming).

I just need to figure out which project I would be better off completing first; which project would be most likely to be successfully published.

So, that's my dilemma! Still, I guess it's better to have too many ideas than none at all! I should quit complaining and just get on with one of them. Hmm. Which one, however, remains the question of perplexity.