thoughts & musings :: CCC

Dear YODEL (previsouly the Home Delivery Network)...

2011-12-06T05:22:00.000-08:00

Your complaints form only allows for 1500 characters so my complaint was not sent.

1500 characters is nowhere near enough space to fully document the catalogue of incompetence I would like to discuss with you, so I will have to post it all here on the web and send you the link.

We ordered an item from the Early learning Centre. We were out when it was delivered so a YODEL delivery card was left.

PARCEL NUMBER: 2899494451047350
TOUR NUMBER: YV13

We called YODEL and re-arranged a delivery for Friday the 2nd December. I was going to stay in all day, so wanted to check it would definitely be delivered. I was assured it would be delivered Friday.

I stayed in all day Friday and nothing was delivered.

So I called up YODEL again on Friday afternoon and the person on the phone said they would re-arrange the delivery for Monday.

Will it definitely be delivered Monday? I asked.
I was told yes.

So I stayed in all Monday.

Nothing arrived.

So I called up on Tuesday morning and kept getting the automated service so I looked on the website for who to call.

The website says "If your tracking number has 8, 13 or 16 digits, please give us a call on 0871 244 0525"

So I called that number and it asked me to put in an 8 digit number and it would not accept the beginning or the end of my 16 digit number.

So I got through to an adviser and they said I had called the wrong number, despite what the website said.

They could not find me on their YODEL system and said there are two different parts of the company and they have no way of checking the other system.

So they gave me another number to ring. I finally got through to someone on that line and was immediately told that this was the wrong number and was sent back to the other number.

When I got back through to someone on there I was given a new completely different number to ring and that person eventually found my parcel and said it would definitely be delivered on the Wednesday (which is tomorrow).

They explained the Monday delivery slot was missed because the request was made after 4pm.

Well:

1) We obviously phoned after 4pm because we were under the delusion that the parcel would be delivered before then, on that Friday, having been told it would be by YODEL.

2) We should not have been assured by the YODEL adviser that the parcel would definitely be delivered Monday if that was not possible

3) As the slot obviously was missed, why were we not contacted on Monday and a new delivery arranged for Tuesday rather than us having to phone up and chase the delivery and have it pushed back to Wednesday?

I will send a copy of this letter to the Early Learning Centre and I hope they will consider changing delivery couriers, as we order a lot from them and I don't want to go through this stupid farce again.

I have had other problems with past deliveries by the Home Delivery Network. You have spent a shed load of money re-branding yourself as YODEL, but you're service still seems to be as crap as it ever was. Would it not have been better to spend the money on becoming not crap? Just a thought.

Brit Writers' Awards Profile Promo

2011-04-27T00:20:00.000-07:00

Brit Writers' Awards 2011 Profile movie for Christian Cook. Filmed on Long Drove (2-mile stretch of road) just outside Glastonbury, Somerset.

Wikileaks reveals the true US military plans for Libya

2011-03-20T07:28:00.001-07:00

NCC cadets being airlifted by ALH a photo by Wg Cdr R S Chauhan (Retd) on Flickr.

According to the latest release from whistle-blowing website Wikileaks, the US military is going to suspend entire battalions of troops on acrobat wires under helicopters, enabling a large invasion to go into Libya without putting any boots on the ground, as the choppers will keep them at a minimum height of about 2 feet above the soil.

If this proves impractical then Plan B is for the promise of 'no boots on the ground' to be adhered to by all invading soldiers wearing flip flops. We now know that the reason for the delay in America committing to military action is that their special forces requested additional time so they could master the art of sneaking around in flip flops without making the give-away 'fwip-fwip-fwip' noise.

Owl you doing?

2011-02-26T10:11:00.001-08:00

Owls
Originally uploaded by cavorite

Everyone should add a new option of 'Owl' in the gender section of the census and then tick it. If a 1,000,000 people declare they are an owl then the government will be forced to accept 'Owl' as a gender.

(Please tweet this or copy and paste it to your Facebook status to help spread the word.)

Yay big society

2011-02-09T13:42:00.000-08:00

Should've gone to PecShavers.

2011-01-27T02:06:00.000-08:00

London Underground terminology explained

2011-01-25T01:15:00.000-08:00

Someone asked today what the difference was between 'minor delays' and 'severe delays' when riding on the tube. They were also intrigued by the phrase "Do not change here due to escalator work."

Here is the official explanation for these terms as listed on the London Underground website:

Minor delay - Children are playing on the escalators and trying to run up/down in the wrong direction thus hampering all the people trying to use the clear left hand side.

Severe delay - Staff in the station foyer have got seriously unfriendly expressions on and so everyone who is lost is too afraid to ask for their help. A large crowd of bewildered passengers is in the middle of the floor area, turning around slowly as they attempt to work out which of the 37 exits (which are all just 5 metres apart anyway) would be best to use.

Do not change here due to escalator work - The escalators at this station currently work and we would like to keep it that way, so the more people we can discourage from using them then the longer they will keep all new and shiny.

Can I dip my Kindle in my coffee yet? (Or: How will book lovers of the future replace their missing DNA?)

2010-09-10T04:57:00.000-07:00

I found it very amusing that the latest TV commercial for Amazon’s Kindle is set on a beach. One of the last lines of defence for print books is that you can drop them in sand on the beach or spill coffee on them and they still function.

It should be noted that the couple in the advert are sitting high up in deck chairs with their kindles held aloft, away from the evil grains. So Amazon has ensured that the kindle is not so close to the sand as to be accused of misleading consumers, but it is clear that they have entered the beach battlefield and are lining up for the fight.

And, before I get a deluge of links in the comments below, I am very aware that there are many waterproof cases available for the Kindle.

I am looking forward to a Kindle commercial where two book lovers nonchalantly dip Kindles in their tea like biscuits.

I do not dislike ebooks.

I love print books, but ebooks are clearly going to dominate the future of the literary world.

They are cheaper to produce.
They take up less space.
You can take your entire bookshelf with you on the train.
They are more friendly on the environment.

I like technology. When I hear that ebooks are outselling printed books in some studies then it does not send a chill down my spine. I welcome this as progress.

But there is one factor in the whole print vs. ebook debate that I feel gets overlooked and I wonder how this need will be tackled in the future.

There is something that books do very well that ebooks (currently) cannot do. Books make up a visual DNA for book lovers.

Most book lovers will have a large bookcase at home. Once upon a time, they struggled to fill it, but nowadays this is probably not the case. The bookcase is full to overflowing, there are piles of books by the sofa and boxes of books in the loft or garage.

And so the book lover has to make a careful choice as to which tomes are entombed in boxes and which are given pride of place on the shelf. The result is a unique matrix of key titles and favourite authors that form a visual DNA for the reader (or readers) of the house.

What your choice of reading says about you is a personal statement that many readers are very proud of. This is a badge they like to display.

Anybody visiting their house can gain a insight into what makes the occupier tick from the wall of battered and faded spines lined along the wall in regimental order.

And then there is the single book left out on the coffee table, the ‘current read.’ Out of all the special volumes on the shelf, the particular book that is on display on the coffee table is a snapshot of which particular part of the DNA is currently active. The book on the coffee table is the springboard for many a social chat between friends while dipping biscuits (or kindles) into tea and coffee.

The book on the coffee table is the bricks-and-mortar equivalent of the Twitter update or Facebook status.

A Kindle left on does not have quite the same effect. A book cannot be switched off and so when you place it down again, it is still displaying its identity. A Kindle left switched on just looks careless and wasteful and gives no indication as to what book is being ready on its blank exterior.

Holding up a certain book to read on a packed commuter train sends out a statement. Picture someone on a train reading a Kindle and we know nothing about them. Picture them reading the printed version of Stephen Hawking’s ‘A Brief History of Time’ or Vladimir Nabokov’s ‘Lolita’ and we see a different image. We can start to construct a narrative about them.

Of course these assumptions can be wrong. And, for this very reason, many people might welcome the anonymity of the Kindle’s blank case.

But for those who enjoy the statement their books make about them, what will happen when print books are a thing of the past? How will they build their book DNA profile to proudly display in the home?

Of course, technology could provide a plethora of solutions. A large plasma screen could easily replace a bookcase and fade through a series of titles and even type key quotes onto the wall.

Now, as a designer interested in multimedia, this giant screensaver might appeal, but it completely misses the point.

Having a large screen on display like this would be a very emphatic statement and far too gregarious for most tastes.

Printed books are the perfect delivery method for making statements about yourself without being seen to be doing so. The bookcase is, after all, simply a storage device and that book left on the coffee table just happens to be sitting there so it is within easy reach for the next reading session.

So, will book lovers in the future simply let go of this book DNA statement?

If not, what other methods will technology provide that send out the same message in an equally subtle manner?

Thank you for reading this and let me know what you think in the comments below.

Life mimics art in hair-raising accident

2010-08-31T03:26:00.000-07:00

The police footage above shows a recent car crash in Ohio that bears an uncanny resemblance to my short story, 'Good to go,' which was WordPlay's story of the month in July.

non haiku fail

2010-08-30T11:55:00.000-07:00

I don't like haiku.
And I will never write one.
So now you're aware.

Good to go.

2010-08-13T03:37:00.000-07:00

Wordplay Writers Short Story of the month for July 2010 is...

Good to go

Now, this doesn’t look good.

Brake lights. Brake lights. Brake lights. A domino topple of red stop lights ripples back from some non-event up ahead. Some idiot blew his nose too abruptly and a Mexican wave of mini traffic lights all went red in neat pairs.

There are no green lights on a motorway to tell you that you can go. You just go when you can. Another short burst of hemmed in freedom until the next tsunami of ‘stop’ floods the road.

And everyone stops. It’s what you do. Well, not everyone. Occasionally someone will be thinking about a typo in a spreadsheet and end up turning the four cars ahead into a mangled concertina – metal and occupants whining in harmony.

But no one would deliberately avoid stopping. Even if you were in the darkest cloud of depression, you can still see clearly that this is no way to go.

‘Go.’ We use that word for death. Not ‘Stop.’ Some elderly relative whose legs have stopped for years and now whose heart suddenly stops. Everything stops. The relatives breathe a sigh of relief. But it wasn’t time for them to stop; it was obviously time to for them to go.

Read all of 'Good to Go' on Wordplaywriters.

What ever happened to the Care Bears?

2010-07-09T03:43:00.000-07:00

In the 1980s, the Care Bears brought love and sharing to millions of youg children. Now in their 30s, many of them have lost all their money on gambling and are forced to live rough. This recently discovered home video by Tenderheart Bear shows what a sorry state many of them are now in.

Snowbrokers.com :: eCommerce for eSkimos

2010-07-04T15:50:00.000-07:00

Snowbrokers.com - the new promotional website for my forthcoming novel, 'Nix Ex Machina,' has now been launched. The apocalyptic-grunge-style website places the viewer post-plot and immerses them in a world of sifting through the debris in order to find the evidence as to why a company made millions of dollars selling snow to the Inuit and then promptly vanished. The most intriguing aspects of the story can only be discovered by reading Nix Ex Machina.

Living for the moment (part 2)

2010-06-07T09:06:00.000-07:00

In part one of ‘Living for the moment’ I looked at the concept that in every minute there is a single second that defines the entire minute and that these significant moments can often leave evidence behind that enable you to relive the entire event much later.

In this second part I’m looking at how significant moments can alter the logical course of events and even be disastrous for your wallet.

When a significant moment occurs, the whole course of events can suddenly turn in an instant. It’s like a car turning at a junction or a light beam hitting an angled mirror.

Consider the example from part one where we examined the scene of a wedding photographer who is walking backwards to fit a large wedding crowd into the shot. We looked at the significant moment where the crowd realise that the photographer is oblivious to the fountain just behind him and decide, as a collective, to keep silent and watch the inevitable moment of schadenfreude.

Before this moment, it is the photographer who is in control of the situation; they have assembled and posed all the guests and the guests have been instructed to keep still and quiet until the photographer is happy that they have achieved their shot.

But when the muffled mumbles and whispers seal the assembled crowd into their conspiracy of mischievous silence the whole scenario is spun on its head. Now it is the crowd of silent guests who assume dominance; the photographer has unknowingly lost all control, a hundred invisible Neroesque thumbs are down and the photographer is condemned to a dunking.

Just as part one carried a warning, so this second installment also comes with a caveat attached.

It concerns a good friend of mine, I’ll call him Tim, mainly because that’s what his parents chose to call him and so if we all stick to parental naming protocol it makes life a lot easier. Tim once told me that he was in danger of throwing his wallet into deep water whenever he walked across a bridge or along a pier.

I initially assumed that otherwise-perfectly-sane-Tim had taken leave of his senses, but once he had talked me through the thought process I found that this series of significant moments was indeed not only very plausible, but in many ways inevitable.

What starts out as a simple piece of logic quickly snowballs through a chain-reaction until black is white and 2+2=5.

Tim’s paranoid thought processes, a series of significant, direction-changing moments, had a very infectious nature to them. And herein lies your warning: reading through the rest of this article could cause you to be forever fearful of your wallet when near deep water. Read on at your own risk.

Moment 01: a piece of unnecessary logic
As Tim is walking along by some deep water, a single statement suddenly strikes. “It would be awful if I threw my wallet over the edge, into the water.”

This is, of course, a superfluous thought and a completely unnecessary safeguard, as Tim obviously has no intention or desire of throwing his wallet into the water, but as soon as this first thought happens then it is already too late, the snowball is already rolling down the hill.

Tim walks on a little farther, thinking through the hassle of having to cancel all his bankcards and buy himself a new wallet until moment 02 strikes.

Moment 02: a new fear dawns
The second stage of the process is where Tim has sworn to himself that he will not under any circumstances be throwing his own wallet into the water, but then wonders if his wallet is safely in his pocket, as it should be. What if his wallet is hanging slightly out of his jacket? It could easily fall out into the water, even without any human assistance.

And so a fail-safe plan swings into action.

Moment 03: the safety check
The plan is quite simple. Tim now plans to put his hand into his pocket to ensure that his wallet is safely deep inside the pocket and not teetering on the edge.

And so his hand goes into the pocket and grabs hold of the wallet to check it is secure and intact where it should be.

So now he just has to take his hand out again.

Moment 04: not so fail-safe after all
The logical course of action is now to simply remove your hand from the pocket, but this overlooks a potentially disastrous possibility. A pocket is only small and so a hand withdrawing from such a confined space could easily drag the wallet out with it.

By performing this check to ensure that your wallet is safe while next to the water you could inadvertently draw the wallet out with your hand and leave it to fall over the edge before you realise what is happening.

So there is only one safe and logical solution left available.

Moment 05: black and white are both looking a little grey 
The safest thing to do now is to take a firm grasp of the wallet and lift it out to prevent it accidentally falling out. So Tim now lifts his wallet out of his pocket and keeps a tight hold of it. As long as he holds it securely until he is off the bridge or pier then all will be well.

Moment 06: that little voice
“You were walking along quite happily with your hands by your sides and your wallet safely in your pocket. And now you have quite deliberately reached into your pocket and lifted your wallet out while you are next to some deep water. Why on earth would you do that unless you really were intending to throw it into the water all along?”

That small inner voice has a very valid point. The fear of throwing the wallet into the water has turned the world around 180˚ and turned logic on its head. Black suddenly seems very bright and 2+2 now takes all the digits on one hand to count out the answer.

Moment 07: … …

Splash!

…

“Oh, arse!”

Living for the moment (part 1)

2010-06-06T10:14:00.000-07:00

In every minute there is a single second that defines the entire minute. If you just witness this single moment then you will have grasped the essence of the other 59 surrounding seconds. In every hour there is a defining minute and this pattern repeats right up through days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries and millennia.

This significant snippet of time, the moment, is something that writers, photographers, painters and other artists continually attempt to grasp hold of. By capturing a moment, it is possible to encapsulate a much larger narrative into a smaller medium.

In comedy performance much is made of the pregnant pause, that expectant silence that ramps up the anticipation of a killer line. And in other creative areas it can also be an understated moment of seeming inactivity that is the defining point in time.

Take the example of a wedding photographer walking backwards in order to get a large wedding crowd into the shot. Is the most significant moment when the photographer finally tumbles over backwards into the fountain or is it when the assembled crowd all spot the inevitable and decide as a group to stay silent and watch the event unfold?

Although the sight of the photographer screaming as he plunges into the cold water is the more dramatic moment, there is a strong argument to say that the assembled crowd all mumbling sheepishly among themselves, and trying to hide their mischievous smirks behind cheesy photo grins, is the key moment that tells the full story.

One of the most fascinating aspects of these moments is that they can often leave a footprint in time. Long after the moment has passed, evidence can be found of what previously occurred and the entire event can be unpacked and relived afresh.

A perfect example of this was a piece of graffiti I saw in the male toilets of a service station on the A303 near Stonehenge.

[WARNING: the following section features a piece of very explicit sexual profanity. It has been almost entirely starred out, but in case you guess the original word and feel offended you are being warned now.]

Graffiti is always interesting. It’s a mass conversation, completely anonymous, where the participants converse over a long period of time and many of those involved never get to see the replies to their statements.

The predominant themes are generally football teams, racial slurs and fictional offers of sexual services.

The particular message that caught my eye on this occasion was not part of any ‘conversation’ on the wall. It was a huge, brash standalone message that arced across the middle of the wall in arrogant capitals… and it was incomplete.

And it was the fact that it was incomplete that made it stand out. Like an unfinished symphony, this moment of arrested ‘creativity’ revealed something of the mind behind this message.

The scrawled message was simply this:

C*********S WANTED CALL:

The original intention was undoubtedly to append a phone number onto the text, but after the message above only blank white wall stared back.

These three words, in the context of a male toilet wall, mark a moment and by using simple logical steps we can begin to unpack and restore what happened to cause this piece of graffiti to sit abandoned.

The placement and subject matter of the text can lead us to quickly make a few fairly safe assumptions about the writer.

It would not be completely impossible for these words to have been written here by a female, but probability would weigh heavily in favour of the writer being male. We can also guess that the age of the writer would more than likely be somewhere in a very vague 13-18 bracket.

And so we can now picture our young writer, locked away in the lone cubicle of the service station toilets on the A303, pen in hand, poised to make his own contribution to the crowded scrawl of messages on the wall.

Another significant detail is that the letters, although large, were written in biro. A Biro is a superb tool for rendering text on paper, but is highly inadequate at marking letters on a painted wall. The letters are worked over with secondary lines in places where the ball in the pen has failed to mark the wall clearly enough. In places the text is formed as much by the scratches in the paint as the ink itself.

Along with some other evidence we will consider shortly, the use of a biro pen to write the graffiti suggests that the act was not premeditated. This was a spur of the moment decision that occurred to the writer while they were in the cubicle. A thick black marker pen would be the ideal tool for the job and any seasoned individual used to tagging a wall would carry one, but this writer would have to make use of the less adequate biro he finds in his pocket.

The writer decides he is going to write an appeal to people willing to perform ‘a certain sexual act’ and encourage them to call a phone number in response to the request.

Without thinking the entire process through, he launches headlong into his plan and scrawls ‘C*********S WANTED CALL:’ onto the wall.

And now came the vital piece of the puzzle… whose phone number should he add to the message?

One intriguing fact that we cannot make any assumptions about is whether or not this individual had his mobile phone on him within the cubicle. Either way, it made no difference to the final outcome, but it would be a wonderful extra level of detail to the unfolding story.

If he did not have his mobile phone on him then the only source of a candidate phone numbers for his message would have been his memory. With people storing all their numbers on a handy mobile, how many phone numbers do people actually memorise now?

He obviously doesn’t want his own phone number plagued by pranksters so he needs another number that he knows. He is unlikely to decide that his parents would be a good choice of victim, so maybe a friend? But how many friends’ phone numbers can he accurately recall? And if the friend is that close that he can recall their number then does he really want to make them the victim or risk the prank being traced back to him?

The victim needs to be someone that the graffiti writer is not overly fond of, but how many people know the phone numbers of people they dislike?

Even if he did have his mobile on him, does he really want to be overheard in a toilet cubicle making a call to directory enquiries or a friend of a friend, attempting to subtly elicit the phone number of someone whose name he is not entirely sure of?

And so the uncomfortable truth slowly dawns on him and we now have our significant moment. The graffiti writer comes to the conclusion that he has no usable phone number that he can use to complete his message. He has no option but to abandon it and leave it incomplete.

We can imagine him taking a few deep breaths before making his ‘escape.’ He knows that nobody will know for certain that it was him who scrawled the incomplete sentence on the wall, even if someone walks into the cubicle directly after he departs, but he still wants to compose himself into a nonchalant composure to distance himself from the evidence of his idiotic folly screaming on the wall behind him.

He has probably long forgotten this moment by now and I know from another stop at the same service station that the wall has since been repainted and now sports a fresh cloud of scrawl on the brickwork.

But there was always a chance that someone visiting that cubicle would spot the incomplete message and stop to think about what had caused it to be abandoned. That someone might begin to unpack that moment and that the moment might live on and leave its mark elsewhere.

[In Living for the moment (part 2) I will be discussing how a significant moment can completely alter the logical course of events and even be disastrous for your wallet.]

Time waits for no man

2010-06-02T10:22:00.000-07:00

In a dream last night, a man asked me what time it was and I showed him my watch, which said it was 2:10AM. I woke up a few minutes later and wondered how accurate the watch in my dream had been. Turning to the bedside alarm clock, I saw that indeed, very spookily, it was exactly 2:10AM*

(* For anyone floating in a small boat halfway between Reykjavik and Nuuk)

A while after writing that, I realised that my Reykjavik/Nuuk reference hadn't taken into account BST (British Summer Time). The clock had actually said 3:23AM and so a clock showing 2:10AM GMT would be much closer to home than Iceland or Greenland. Knock off one hour for BST and allow for about 3 minutes of dream time before I woke up and the time lands up at 2:20AM. And, what would you know? I have just checked and discovered that the bedside clock is indeed 10 minutes fast.

So the watch in my dream was spot on, but for GMT, not BST.

Okay, so more fudge than a Devon-Cornwall road-trip, but I am going with it... step aside Derren Brown.

What this does tell me is that not only is my body clock far more accurate than the bedside alarm clock, but that my body clock is still running on GMT and has not adjusted to BST even after two months.

That explains a lot.

Needs a little work

2010-04-04T14:51:00.000-07:00

Here are some iconic film quotes and tag-lines as they appeared in the first drafts.

"In Space, no one can sell ice cream."

"Hugh is gonna call."

"Go ahead aunt, take my tray."

"You could easily get away with a much smaller boat and still have nothing to worry about."

"Frankly my dear, I can't live on jam."

"I'm gonna make him an offer to cart refuse."

"I love the smell of toast in the morning, it smells like... hot crispy bread."

"Made it ma! Top of the stairs!"

"Toto, I don't think we're in Tesco anymore."

"I'll be back... a bit later maybe, if I've got time after seeing Beryl."

"Houston, we have the giggles."

"Here's Johnny... with the tour guide, but you can still just see the Eiffel Tower in the background."

"Nobody puts Bay leaf in the Korma."

"Yippee Ki-yay, Mother Hubbard!"

New Beginnings...

2007-03-03T02:01:00.000-08:00

I had written little bits before this moment. But every child does. Every child tries to write a book at some point. Only a few are still doing it as adults. I had started a satirical novel about near nuclear war with all my friends in it. I'd also started a very boyish story about an illegal car race.

I don't look back at either of these as being significant at all. They weren't. They were silly attempts and I gave up on them.

This particular morning I was bored. I think it was about 1988, so I was 14. It was the middle of the school holidays and I had nothing to do. I wandered into the dining room and stopped in my tracks. I felt like an archaeologist that had stumbled into a tomb. The mysterious artefact that had caught my attention was a typewriter.

My mum had been typing out the church magazine and had left the typewriter sat out on the table. It was a very old clunky typewriter. It wasn't rusty or corroded, but the metal was tarnished and looked sort of bronze-like. The metal was all slightly warped and nothing looked straight on it. It was as if the whole thing was organic and had grown rather than been manufactured.

The arms that actually punched the letter shapes were very noisy and swung like sledgehammers. You could always hear mum typing from anywhere in the house and it was a big house. Because the metal was so warped the arms would often clash and get jammed together, so to save time mum had removed the casing completely. This meant that all the twisted-tree-root inner workings were exposed - little wires and cogs, pulleys and levers, smoothed over by caked-on layers of dust.

With the array of arms all laid flat across the front, it looked like the carcass of a dead animal, but there was something very much alive about it, or at least something dormant seemed to lay within --waiting to be awakened.

No one else is in the house.

I pull out a fresh white page and slip it into the rollers. The typewriter grunts and protests as I feed it through its jaws. The edge of the page spools round and emerges at the front, cutting through the dark brown visage. I roll the page up so more is on display. The page is clean and white, it is square and smooth. It sits in absolute contrast to the curvy dusty fussy detail of the machine around it.

It looks like an inviting snowdrift and though it is beautiful in its unspoilt purity, I am longing to make my own footprints across it.

I stare at the page and get lost into it... the whiteness burns and blurs my eyes until I can see nothing but a white fog. There's a much quoted saying from the writer Gene Fowler that sums this up perfectly: "Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead."

I come to the conclusion that I have nothing worth saying. There is nothing remotely sensible or meaningful that I can think of with which to mark this newborn page.

I stare at the page all the same, still captivated by it.

There is still nothing that comes to mind and I say to myself, "Anything I try and write now will be totally useless and utterly pointless."

I sit back and sigh.

All around me, away from the hypnotic white glow of the paper is the boredom of summer holidays when you're at a loss how to amuse yourself, but the page is still blank and I have nothing to write.

I had no idea until years later, only very recently, how significant a moment this was. Logic says walk away. I have nothing useful to write so write nothing. But the page is still so inviting and the desire to write something is burning within. I wonder what would have become of me if I'd walked away, phoned a friend or gone for a bike ride.

Still, sitting there, the only thought I have is that same true fact... "Anything I try and write now will be totally useless and utterly pointless."

It seems like a dead end. A closed door. But as that was the only thing I had in my mind, that would have to the foundation. It was not necessarily a dead end, it was a perfect beginning.

I thud the Caps Lock key into place and I type without even thinking...

THE TOTALLY USELESS GUIDE TO UTTERLY POINTLESS SUBJECTS.

What logic deemed to be a non starter is now my title and the typing doesn't stop. I have no plan or idea where I'm going with it, but I just keep typing.

Was it silly? Extremely! Was it the best writing in the world? No, far from it. It covered topics such as 'Where do turnips go after death?' and other such non-life-altering discussions. Some of it is probably very embarrassing, but I am certainly not ashamed of it.

In fact, a long while later I photocopied a dozen copies and started selling it at school.

And it was that moment, staring at the white page, realising I had remotely sensible useful to say, but then coming to the conclusion that this was a potential start rather than a dead end, that was the first step that triggered off everything that followed.

Wham! Pow! Isn't it time we killed off 'graphic novel'?

2006-09-14T15:06:00.000-07:00

Before we look forward to the grisly and agonising death of the term 'graphic novel,' we should allow its short and futile life to flash before its eyes one last time as we look back to the reason why people saw the need to hash together this ill-fitting moniker in the first place. Many early long strip cartoon books have retrospectively been daubed with the term 'graphic novel' upon reprint in an attempt to jump on the rickety bandwagon of this supposedly cool label. Some ludicrous claims have also been made of cartoons appearing in newspapers way back in the late 1800s as being early graphic novels. However, the first contemporary usage of the term appears to have arisen around the early 70s.

So what is a graphic novel?

Now, fans of graphic novels, please look away now and read a bit of spiderman or something... okay, the rest of you... it's a comic. A long one, but don't laugh, these comics are not funny at all... they are very, very serious indeed and don't you forget it.

Now because a lot of misunderstood young people didn't want to explain their comics to their prehistoric parents and hated the way people looked down on the term 'comic' they decided to conjure up a far more grown-up and mature sounding name to call their comics... and so they decided to call them 'graphic novels.'

Aww, bless.

Okay, let's try and put the flippancy down for a tiny while and pretend there's a serious debate to be had here. Yes, it is true that many of the works that fall under the term 'graphic novel' are not childish comics. They are longer highly-finished artistic works with much deeper storylines that explore mature themes.

So readers of these 'more mature' comics felt patronised and looked down upon for being seen as reading comics. But why did the originators of this term demonstrate their own ignorance by hijacking a completely inappropriate term to try and wrap some borrowed respectability around these publications?

Even many within the comic industry flinch away from the term 'graphic novel' and treat it as a shallow marketing ploy.

A novel is an extensive work of fictional prose that explores the depth of the human character and mines the complexities of human thought. Does a graphic novel offer the same rich texture of cognitive material on a parallel with the great literary novel?

A novel has no visual information to impart and so stokes the readers imagination in order to paint a vivid panorama of the world in which its plot unfolds. Part of the skill of the graphic novel is the artist's skillful depiction of the scenes and characters that populate the framed rows within the pages. As soon as you look at the first square of the comic strip then the scene is already painted within our mind and we quickly move into the speech and dialogue of characters and events that are displayed for us to witness. A novel starts with the blank emptiness of the completely uninformed mind and slowly drips information into the brain, word by word, and as dark blindness fades over time the entire picture emerges in full solidity. The scenes of a 'graphic novel' are presented flat, as is -- they are merely viewed. The scenes in a novel have to be read, contemplated, interpreted and imagined.

So are 'graphic novels' shallow childish pieces of worthless pulp?

No, there are some very deep and intricate plots that deserve respect. But these aren't novels. In just the same way that any movie based upon a novel isn't a film novel. A novel turned into a film is properly referred to as an adaptation. Why do we call them this? Because the methods of presenting the plot and characterisation within each are worlds apart. A novel will pause outside of time to explore a single notion of thought for many pages in a way a film cannot achieve. Similarly a panoramic vista of an epic scene upon the big screen can present a vast experience instantaneously that a novel would have to take a long time to paint an accurate image of.

But are the subtle nuances deftly displayed in the subtle expressions of a skilled actor shallow just because we are shown the scene and not left to visualise it for ourselves? Obviously not. Films can be very deep and thought provoking, but the mechanisms of how they unfold plot and characters are a world apart from the way in which a novel imparts its contents. Everyone that watches the film will see the same lead character. Everyone that reads the same novel will see an entirely different lead character.

And while we have films under our scrutiny, lets us draw graphic novels alongside for a comparison between the two. Both films and graphic novels present the characters and action visually and in both we view the scene from an angle and distance selected by the creator.

So there is a much greater link between 'graphic novels' and films. Should we maybe call them 'illustrated screenplays' or 'storyboards'?

If the whole point of the term was to prevent people looking down upon the art form then why steal a highly-regarded word from the literary community and hence invite these past masters at sharpened criticism to compare mature comics side-by-side with the likes of Joyce and Kafka?

So what of the term 'novel'? Nowadays its meaning has been diluted down to simply be used to refer to a long fictional book, but its true meaning is far more sepcific. Up until the 18th Century, the predominant fictional works were romances. These were long epics that told of fantastical tales of brave warriors in distant lands. At around this time some writers began producing works that featured far more ordinary aspects of everyday life and so generally explored the inner workings of man (thoughts, emotions, motivations etc.). The term novel, literally meaning "new" from nouvelle (French) or "novella" (Italian), was used to distinguish this new form of literature from the traditional romances. In simple terms, a romance was a long work of fictional prose where extraordinary characters did extraordinary things and a novel was a long work of fictional prose where ordinary characters did ordinary things.

So, when we think of the plots and characters to most 'graphic novels,' is there maybe a far more accurate name that has perhaps been overlooked? Are these illustrated works actually 'graphic romances'?

But try telling the fans of 'graphic novels' that what they are in fact reading is technically a graphic romance.

Their reaction?

It's comic.

Leaked CIA Lebanon Report

2006-08-16T15:05:00.000-07:00

On the 13th of July 2006, the day after hostilities had broken out in Southern lebanon, a routine daily report from a Red Cross Team attached to a UN fact-finding group operating from the city of Tyre stated that two of the company were missing. No details were filed as to the nature of the incident that led to their disappearance and when comparing this incident with other similar events where individuals had either been fatally wounded, abducted or vanished, it appeared as if strict procedures had either not been followed or had not been reported as required.

Though these anomalies were initially attributed to the hasty withdrawal by the UN to vacate the city of Tyre, several journalists were suspicious of the lack of any press releases or discussion over the two missing aid workers. Most speculation over the affair in the US and UK media was blocked by heavy gagging orders. However, in the European and International press, and particularly upon the Internet, theories began to emerge that the two 'missing' aid workers were in fact agents working for the CIA or MI6.

Facing a barrage of Freedom of Information requests, The US government eventually released a lengthy document of 'collaborated testimony' that it had gathered from the conflict. A heavily edited report in the appendix from two 'Friendly Operatives,' referenced only as Sea-Monkey Charlie and Sea-Monkey Foxtrot, does seem to tally with the 'disappearance of the two aid workers on the 13th July.

A few extracts of the more interesting information appear below. Some readers may find the details of these reports deeply disturbing and shocking.

15.07.06 - Just south of Marwaheen, close to the border.
Reports of gunfire sound throughout the night, many Israeli forces were heard shouting uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh and the Hizbullah guerilla responded with yells of peown-peown peown-peown.

There have been multiple casualties. Despite seeing many shot in the arms, head and abdominal region, all fatal wounds seem to be affect the stomach area. We saw several casualties staggering around for up to five minutes gripping their stomachs and muttering 'eurgh uuurgh uuuuurgh' before slowly collapsing to the ground.

The only wounds not inflicted upon the stomach occurred when we saw a small exchange of fire between factions on the outskirts of the city of Tyre. Hizbullah fighters accused some retreating Israeli soldiers of not taking their shots. The Israelis, quoting the Geneva convention upon this very issue, responded that they had only been hit in the legs, at which point they all adopted a mild limp and continued to run away.

16.07.06 - On the border near Aitaroun.
A similar incident also occurred to the west of Aitaroun in a small farming village near a strategic bridge that has seen some heavy fighting over 2 consecutive nights. A group of Hizbullah patrolling the bridge at night, when caught in a crossfire, refused to accept having been shot claiming that the Israelis must have run out of bullets by now.

This led to rapid shouts of 'reload' from the Israeli side and the firing continued, however the Hizbullah stated that they had shot all the Israelis long before they had shouted reload. In response to this the Israeli commander dutifully informed the Hizbullah leader that they all had bullet proof vests on anyway.

17.07.06 - East of Sidon.
An Israeli platoon, pursuing two groups of Hizbullah rocket units deep within Lebanon, was taken by surrpise by a sudden counter-attack.

A Hizbullah leader yelled "Ha! We put mines there so you're all dead."

Holding their ground, the Israeli commander responded, "But you ran across there first before we did."

The Hizbullah responded with "Ahh, no, because we had special shoes on."

19.07.06 - North of Tiberias.
Today we witnessed a rocket attack on an Israeli command post.

A Hizbullah soldier ran in with one hand in the air screaming eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeoooooouw and then he proceeded to walk from one end of the installation to a point three quarters of the way along its perimeter declaring "Right, everything from there to there has just been blown up."

At this point an Israeli on the edge of the compound said "Well I was outside here so I've just shot you."

The Hizbullah man calmly replied that he wasn't really here, it was just a rocket they had fired and so therefore the Israeli soldier was stupid and that his father cleaned toilets in Ethiopia.

20.07.06 - On the border near Avivm.
On Thursday night it had looked as if there might be a resolve to the conflict as an exchange of prisoners was agreed to take place the following morning.

However, Hizbullah discovered three Israeli spies deep within their territory just hours later and accused them of attempting to sneak up to the hostages and touch their hands and shout 'release' in order to free these prisoners outside of the agreed exchange.

Neither side would back down. In response to accusations that none of their troops knew what a girls bits looked like, Hizbullah issued a statement that the Israeli troops were all gay anyway. No talks to resolve this latest dispute were possible, as the Israelis were called home for their tea and Hizbullah went off on their bikes to spy on the girl's netball practice.

Maspalomas diary 09 - Departure

2005-10-22T22:04:00.000-07:00

The day to leave has arrived.

We have had a fantastic time, but we are ready to leave now. A decent cup of tea is calling us from afar.

A Union Jack Towel is hanging over the balcony opposite ours. A small piece of resistance to the German invasion. Though this flag also has been tainted with the word 'Arsenal' so I can only assume there are some Burberry items looming within the apartment. I am happy to stay incognito rather than align myself with the yob herd.

The Hotel manager still thinks I'm German and says Guten tag to me at breakfast.

We pay to extend our room. You're supposed to check out by 12:00 but our flight isn't until 2:30 am on Sunday.

We visit the local shopping arcade. Hayley falls in love with a whisk and egg timer with chickens feet and a beak so I buy them for her. We buy four other small gifts for people at home.

Hayley spots some large trampolines and fancies a go. I would, but my sunburn is advising against it, so I sit and watch.

We fly back into the UK at 6:30 am. It is very cold and dark. The biggest news seems to be a dead parrot that might have bird flu... (oh, and some riots in Birmingham.)

I check the phone messages. A strange woman's voice I do not recognise comes on.

"Hello, it's me, I won't be popping over just yet as I forgot about some stewing steak I had and I've only just got it out. See you soon, bye."

Yep, we're definitely home.

Maspalomas diary 08 - Wave goodbye

2005-10-21T19:02:00.000-07:00

Today we are back in the waves again, jumping the breakers and larking around. A French couple are doing likewise some 20 metres to the side of us.

After a while, the French couple go back to sunbathe. Every now and then, a particularly large wave will beckon the French guy back into the water. He charges in trying to catch it as it breaks but never gets there in time.

Hayley and me are busy jumping breakers and splashing each other in waist high water. After one quite large wave breaks over us I start to walk back to shore but I can't. My feet are walking towards shore but I am moving backwards, moonwalking Michael Jackson style.

The pull from the undercurrent is nothing like I have ever felt. Suddenly the French guy is on his feet, whooping with joy and sprinting futilely towards the sea.

That's when I half turned and saw it.

Just 3 metres behind us I see the reason for the under current. Another wave is coming in.

The wave is massive.

The larger ones so far have been about 5 to 6 feet high, still powerful and large but nothing compared to this. It dwarfs them all so far. It still has no white foam on top -- it is a solid blue wall of water and is still building.

Finally an 8 to 10 foot high wave is standing behind us. I didn't have time to try and wade away or even shout a warning to Hayley - I just froze. It happened so quickly and I knew this wasn't going to be a nice jump in the breakers - it was massive.

It disregards us in silent nonchalance and then calmly crashes down on top of us. It feels like a library shelf of aquatic encyclopaedias has just collapsed onto me. the wave smashes me under water and pushes me to the sandy bed.

I cannot move, frozen by paralysing fear and the massively strong under current. Water is pouring into my nose and mouth. The bubbling deafness in roaring inside my ears and I find myself bobbing in the darkness... my mind is now the entire world... it is all that remains.

But my world now is bigger than that...

Where is Hayley?

This is the turning point. Hayley can swim so I think she'll be okay. Thinking and knowing are oceans apart. A ticker tape or paranoia starts flowing across my mind. What if she's not okay? What if she is okay but I don't make it? She'll be stuck in a foreign land with this to deal with. What if neither of us make it, ignorant of the others distress?

From the area of water around me where they have recently dissolved, a solidity pours into my limbs and the fight begins. Fortunately the wave has washed me a little more ashore than where it first collapsed onto us. I manage to turn over and force my head above water, struggling in the swirling sand to find a grip to steady myself.

I momentarily push up and my head feels air against it. I cough up a lot of the water in me and manage to drag in a spluttering breath. I go under again and the deaf blindness bubbles all around once more, but having tasted air, I thrash and punch at the floor and propel myself up.

I stand up and cough up more water. The first sound to greet my reborn ears is the whoop of the Frenchman, having arrived at the scene late but obviously having enjoyed the tail end of the sea monster that has just swallowed me and spat me onto the shore.

I spot Hayley, looking as bedraggled and washed up as I feel, her bikini half wrenched off by the force of the wave, coming towards me breathless but smiling. I'm still shaking but relieved and happy. I hug Hayley.

Suddenly my world feels brighter...

Hang on... my world actually IS brighter.

"Where are your sunglasses?" asks Hayley.

I have lost my rather pricey reaction lens glasses. We hunt for over an hour but they have vanished. The sea took a memento off me, but I am just happy to walk away from it otherwise intact.

When we get back to the apartments I check my email and discover that my brother, in my absence, has got himself on the BBC caption competition... sneaky git.

Maspalomas diary 07 - Snap decisions

2005-10-20T18:01:00.000-07:00

I have now filled up all my memory sticks so I bite the bullet and buy an extra Gigabyte memory stick. That will be full before the end.

I walk towards the toilets near the beach and am about to enter where I see a man washing his hands. Spotting the 'female' symbol over the door I swerve at the last minute and enter the gents.

Someone behind me begins laughing and suddenly shouts "Bob! Bob! You're in the ladies!" "Oh," shouts bob from within. "I did wonder why those women came in."

Sometimes when photographing spiders, I have a split personality issue. My arachnophobia is screaming "kill the evil git! Stamp on it." My photographer side is seeing the possibility of getting a great photo and demanding I move in and find the shot.

Standing on the beach, some huge Atlantic breakers are rolling in and smashing onto the beach. The waves are lovely huge rolling breakers with white frothy tops that would make an amazing photo.

I can zoom in from the beach but that will get me a mediocre shot at best. I know that I need to get at eye-level with the wave. And so I move in.

I position myself at the point where the last wave broke and sit down in a foot of water, my rather expensive camera now poised in the path of a something that could write it off in an instant.

The wave approaches.

An explosion of water comes roaring in at me like an unleashed animal. Just as the wave is about to overwhelm the camera I hoist the camera up at arm's length -- I am drenched by the wave and engulfed momentarily, the camera is held above the water high up in my hand like a submarine's periscope.

Like a wildlife documantary maker, I am enjoying watching the waves and have a kind of respect for them, watching them form far out at see, rolling bigger and bigger and then curling into crashing white crests upon the shore.

Maspalomas diary 06 - Steps in the right direction

2005-10-19T22:59:00.000-07:00

Another day on the beach soaking up the sun and wandering across the endless dunes. Not trying to rub it in, it's just what happened.

Speaking of rubbing it in... spray on sun cream, best invention mankind has ever come up with. I can't stand that whole greasy self-basting ritual applying the sand-glue.

The courtesy bus did us the discourtesy of not showing up so we had to walk back. My legs didn't go a bundle on that.

When we get back we bump into a new German family that have just arrived. Out of all the 95% of Germans patrolling the camp, they bump into one of the few Brits.

"Sprechen Sie Deutchse?" he asks.
"Nein, English," I reply.
He hesitates but I beckon them to follow me to the pool. I look at his room number and then tell them "Gehen sie Uber (pointing to the pool) and gehen sie um die ecke, links."

It is basically the directions they need, but he is still looking hesitant. A fellow German walks past and he seeks the help of his countryman. Fair enough. I chuckle and walk off.

Back in our bedroom I am walking around and hobbling around like an old man. My legs are aching and the sunburn leaves me feeling stiff.

As I hobble around I notice that the gap from right step to left is longer and more awkward than from left to right. It's almost as if my left foot is learning to walk from the right and so taking slightly longer as it learns.

I discover that my sandals have bitten a chunk out of my ankle and the beach has kindly filled it with sand.

Maspalomas diary 05 - Having a Burberry good time

2005-10-18T21:58:00.000-07:00

The tide can come in pretty fast on the beach.

I looked up from the book I was reading and judged we had about 15minutes before we need to move. A few moments later and the waves lapped up at the edge of my towel. The bloke behind me chuckled and I looked up and smiled, seeing the funny side.

We had a close escape.

Moments later, the couple along from us had a wave sweep right over their legs to their waists. They both squealed and leapt up. the bloke behind us collapsed in hysterics.

With all the walking and hiking around the dunes and back and forth from the beach to the apartments my legs are beginning to ache and hurt a lot. The sunburn does not help. Despite all the sun cream and after sun I use, I have to go through the patchy red lobster stage before any chance of anything remotely brown will appear.

There's nothing we can do about the sun and nothing we can do about the long walking. The scenery in the dunes is stunning, but, at the end of the day, like an overthrown veal farmer, my calves are killing me.

Back at the bar, I line up behind two of the other Brits. A Burberry cap on one of their heads. They talk to the bar tender loudly and slowly in English and say "Two Beers please mate."

The bar tender, a very friendly chap, replies mockingly, " I am sorry but I do not understand as I speak no English."

They laugh and awkwardly repeat the order.

Up I come next. "Hola. Uno agua y uno zumo de naranja, per favore." What I'm doing is not remotely clever. I'm just learning key sentences and repeating them parrot fashion. But I feel a gulf open up between me and the guys before me.

Seeing that rowdy tribe of typical Brit yob tourist makes me want to go even further in the opposite direction. I try and become Archetypal English Gent abroad. I try and learn some of the language and conduct myself with as much politeness and dignity as I can.

The Brit yobs make me cringe and it pushes me to try and become a dying breed, the myth of the Englishman abroad -- I don't quite wear a white suit, Panama hat and walk with a cane, but maybe one day.

The bar tender tells me he has had just about as much as he can take of German singing and asks if we haven't thought about putting up a Union Jack flag. I tell him it isn't worth it and he agrees.

We do have one Union Jack on us but Hayley probably won't let me hang her underwear from the balcony and they're so tiny they probably won't be spotted.