Mock Duck

A Good Day

5 Things to Cheer Me Up

I'm having a bad day with various things going wrong and not feeling too well.

Decided I really need to cheer myself up and if anyone wants to join in that would be nice. Add five things that cheer you up.

Things that Cheer Me Up

1. Dogs racing for balls. Everything about them look so happy, I can't help but be cheered.

2. Laughing like a drain with various (very funny) friends. Although last time my friend from Galway came to visit she made me laugh so much we both lost our voices and had to take some deliberate time-out to recover.

3. The Blues Brothers. (In fact, I shall listen to it now.)

4. Sunshine. I think this is a common one for everyone in Edinburgh. I get the winter blues quite badly.

5. The Strike - brilliant comic strip film I watched the other night. A cautionary tale for all budding film-writers everywhere.

Is it working? (Takes pulse). A bit. I might try it again in a minute...

Just to explain

Just to explain about the article underneath. It was originally posted in The Book Bar - Jess Ruston's literary blog quite a while ago. But, sadly, The Book Bar is no more (hopefully to be replaced with something just as interesting) which means me links don't work! So I thought I'd repost it here and then the link at the side could remain.

Of course - it's totally old news so I don't expect you lot to actually read it.

Please feel free to ignore and I'll come up with some genuine new posts soon.

Favourite Books

I just posted a marathon review this morning. I feel a bit ashamed that it was so long and can't imagine many people are going to want to wade through to the bitter end, but it is one of my very favourite books so I got a bit inspired. Ahem.

If anyone here wants to read about one of my favourite books, here it is.

Fledgling Thoughts

Well, I'm not sure if it's the progeny of the original fat bluetit (who used to aggressively chirrup and jump up and down at me every time I dared go anyway near the peanut feeder last winter) as he had gone AWOL for a while and I rather suspected might have met a sticky end under the sharpened claws of my neighbour's cat. But the garden now has 5 small fluffy additions bumping around from branch to branch and making a bit of a song and dance about it too

The parents are madly trying to round them up but they're having none of it. The world is far too exciting. I've just had a cup of tea in the garden with them all crashing around the honeysuckle above my head. I hope they pipe down a bit or they might start attracting some unwanted attention from a certain sleek feline friend of mine...

*Thanks to Enuwy from Flickr for the apt image.

Which Apprentice Candidate Are You?

I have to admit. I'm not ashamed -  I absolutely love The Apprentice and Wednesdays nights suddenly seem very drab and drear without it.

I've been thinking about which Apprentice candidate various people are like and thought I'd ask here:

Which Apprentice candidate, are you?

After a lot of deliberation, I've finally decided I'm probably more like Clare in manner - talk too much, loud and quite outgoing. But essentially am probably more like Lucinda. I know, I know, I don't have the berets and I'm not into aromatherapy. But bear with me. Lucinda is creative and thoughtful and clever (bigging myself up here) and does have really good ideas. When she is leading she also pretty generous and people tend to like her. BUT. Big weakness. She needs a lot of support. And she gets hurt and downcast waaaaay too easily by others not listening to her. It is important to her (too important?) that people recognise what she's doing and recognise the value of her ideas. She gets hurt and cross and can't understand why they don't SEE what she is saying makes sense. She wants support, encouragement, feedback and recognition, in short. Hmmm. And gets far too upset when people start going about comparing her to Ann Widdecombe for example. (I mean - Ann Widdecombe!!!??? For goodness sake!!)

The Geek, I have decided, is Raef. Again, not in dress-sense. I don't think the Geek has ever so much as dragged a brush through his hair. But he is relaxed - isn't a sort of person to fuss about trivial unimportances, is generous and encouraging, the workplace he has created is really nice and he doesn't get hurt about stuff or by other people very easily. Weakness - he can be a bit too vague sometimes and idealistic. Oh and would sell his own granny up the river for his business. So I better watch out. (Those last two statements sound like a paradox I realise, but true nonetheless.)

So, tell me in the comments - which contestant are you and why? And who was your favourite?

Here to remind you:

Lee
Clare
Alex
Helene
Raef
Jenny (Kosher chicken and environmentally unfriendly cards - in fact was there a fiasco she wasn't involved in?)
Nicholas de Lacy-Brown (the one who couldn't talk to Alex because he was into Art and Culture)
Sara (Wedding cake: You aren't going "ugh, it's disgusting" so why don't you buy it!)
Lucinda
Shazia (I liked her - why was she fired?)
Jennifer (The best sales person in the whole of Europe)
Lindi    (who offered the 24hour hotline to find out how your laundered underwear was doing)
Kevin      (who compared anyone rejecting his environmental cards as like the US refusing to do anything about pollution. I liked him too but then I am a bit strange)
Simon (the one who knew about laundry equipment in Bosnia)
Michael  (Kosher Chicken incident and oh so many other highlights)
Ian (Can't even spell the word L***r. Apparently.)

Or, last but not least, you may compare yourself to the great man himself. Sir Alan Sugar.

 
 

Motherly Love

My mother has an odd idea about concentration and writing.

She's been helping me recently with a bit of DIY. Well, let's be honest here. More than helping. She has been practically doing it all single-handed. Believe me, my mother is brilliant in every, single way except...well, as a friend of mine pointed out today, the trouble with DIY is that it never really stops if you don't let it. So, a bit of freshening up of the paintwork leads to...noticing the horrid plastic bit on the windowledge...leads to trying to improve the window-ledge by...ripping all the plastic off and being left with a total mess that has to be fixed...touching up the skirting board leads to...suddenly being aware of every tectural inconsistency in the wall...leads to suddenly finding you're replastering the lot...you get my drift.

She seems to be enjoying herself so on the whole I don't mind too much. If she wants to start messing around painting the tiling in the kitchen it's no skin off my nose. It does look nicer. But I probably wouldn't be bothering to do it myself. (Actually scrap the probably. I know I wouldn't. Way too lazy. Though I am not proud of this fact.)

The one thing she doesn't understand, however, is concentration. As I trawl through the manuscript considering various small but vital (obviously) changes to sentences - does this one flow better? Is it nicer this way or that? - she comes in with the hoover.

"Don't mind me," she says, merrily, motoring round my ankles. "Just move your feet for a second for me there, would you? That's right."

Or she starts tidying around my desk whilst I work or occasionally saying, "You don't mind if I borrow your computer a second to check up on some house prices?" or "how does this phone work?" or "I've found this used battery - where do they normally go?" (Where do they go? Where do they go? They are supposed to lie, randomly discarded in a pile of other miscellaneous useless matter, that's where they go! I mean, what sort of people "have a place" for used batteries? A special drawer, shelf, filing cabinet...Am I going mad???)

Finally today I snapped.

"Can you stop interrupting me every two seconds!" I bawled. Followed by, "Sorry. It's just. Hard to concentrate, you know."

"Oh, I understand," she said, understandingly, and crept out of the room like a mouse.

Five minutes later she crept into the room like a mouse again.

"Don't let me disturb you, but I found these," she whispered, hardly audible and holding up some random metal pieces that probably fell off one of The Geek's various bits of machinery lying about the place (therefore, quite obviously, supposed to be in the "random bits and bobs" pile along with an old crayon, some blue-tack, a portable sewing set, a crumpled ball of old receipts and a tampon or two on the shelves in the sitting-room, which is, no doubt, where she found it). "Where do they normally go?"

Argh!

And in relation to the last post...

Just to show Sam I am open-minded, I thought it was only fair to post a piece representing the other side of the age-banding debate - this time from Meg Rosoff.

Sorry for Having No Braincells Right Now.

I'm sorry for not entertaining you much on this blog recently.

I was determined not to be one of these types that drone on and on boringly about their book. But, I suppose, what you forget is how all-consuming the process is. Your life shrinks down to the size of...well a small square of bound pages I suppose. I'm just not doing anything much else exciting to tell you about at the minute. I am not even having many interesting thoughts. I am even dreaming about editing my book, which just shows how boring the inside of my head has become. I even had a dream (not book-related) where a friend and I tried to work out a time to meet up - comparing dates and times and unable to find a mutually convenient time. It was - literally - a nightmare. Even my nightmares are dull! Argh.

Maybe you lot should entertain me and we should have a fight about something. That would be fun. But I don't even think I've got it in me to have a fun debate at the moment. I've been meaning to post this piece by Darren Shan about age-banding in children's books. I didn't really know what I thought about this but (I think) I've been won over by the nays. What do you think?

"A spot of Sadomasochism with your box of chocolates, Sir?"

Adrian, my agent, just pointed out that SM4A is being released next Valentine's Day. This made me laugh. And also made me think of The Apprentice's hilarious card episode...But enough of that, don't want to pick up on the disaster of those ecologically unfriendly (in more ways than one) cards...

...So, if you're after a slightly unusual gift for your loved one on Valentine's Day just swivel your eyes to the right.

:):):):) (A few smilie faces as it's sunny. In Edinburgh. This must always be celebrated.)