Sickness and Sunshine

Another week of contrasts.

I'm sure there's few of our regular readers who aren't aware of Hera's recent fight with the tumor fairy. Her plight has been exceptionally well documented by Gayle in a thorough series of updates worthy of Mordin Solus himself.

Far be it from me to upstage a cute puppy with a major illness, but I too have suffered at fate's cruel, snot-encrusted hand, having successfully worked through a vicious rhinovirus in the short space of a few days. To say it went through me faster than a fat kid through an eclair shop would nothing short of gross understatement.

However, this most recent bout of viral brutality has been framed in a setting quite at odds to the usual stomping ground of the common cold. Sunshine. Fecking barrel-loads of it.

Now I realise it's not odd for the weather in this country to get sand in its vagina and change at the drop of a hat. Blizzards in May, April showers in August - the only odd thing about these is that we still find ourselves surprised when we step out the door into sub-arctic temperatures, clad in  flip-flops and vomit-inducing Hawaiian shirts, indignantly bleating "This isn't what Carol Kirkwood said would happen!"

It's safe to say these recent contrasts have left me bereft of thought and inspiration, a situation I intend to remedy as I hurtle through the noon traffic to work later. But contrast highlights change, juxtaposition revealing the intransigent relationships between things.

Soft rubber to hard tarmac, thought to the void of inspiration, sickness to sunshine.

My dog has a lampshade for a head

The above sentence may seem strange to you, however for me it's strange for very different reasons.

Old lampshade head herself

You see, despite the hilariously heart-warming picture above, I used to have a slightly crippling fear of dogs. After one too many youthful encounters of seemingly rabid devil creatures leaping up at me, the playful look of psychosis in their eyes, I decided that I was terrified of these monstrous creatures.  This became all the easier to accept due to the fact I was cat people. The miserable, shut-in me probably related easier to a creature that had no real reason to leave the house, except to occasionally crap in next door's garden. Coupled with the fraught experience of trying to walk my Auntie's increasingly potty array of dogs, I quickly became of the impression that these animals were not for me. So I blissfully continued me formative years crossing the road at the sight of dog walkers.

Then I met Gayle.

In the love-addled horniness of desire, I kind of glossed over the moment where she told me she had a Rottweiler. Somewhere deep in my reptile brain, a frantic little goblin was punching me in the part of my head that stimulated fear, but he was locked in a desperate struggle with an equally frantic goblin who controlled the slightly ruder parts of my body. This, for me, was something of a conundrum.

Now, since I probably lost a few folks at the first sentence, I won't give a full blown account of how this changed. Suffice to say I learnt how to pick up dog shit without retching (and in a bag, no less), watched a few episodes of 'The Dog Whisperer' and set out forging a relationship with the enemy.

Something odd happened.

At first, Hera was Gayle's dog.
 "Your dog knocked that vase over."
"Your dog ate the post again.", I would bluntly say.
"Our dog, darling." She would kindly remind me.It turns out this wasn't just a vain attempt to spread the blame.
Soon old slobber chops became the definite article -
"I'll walk the dog."
"The dog has her face stuck in the bin."
"Our dog, darling." Would come the reply.

This gradually started the process of acceptance and words to represent Hera as an 'other' slipped from my Lexicon. However, it seems a happy medium was not reached and recent events have shifted things chillingly to a place I would never have expected.

"My dog has a lampshade on her head."

Scream if you wanna go faster...

Frantic. If I were to pick a word for the last two days, it would be frantic.

Or awesome.

Either way, it's been an eye opener. Making the much needed leap from the diesel-powered sardine cans of the nations railways, to the beauty and freedom of two wheeled luxury, has been both a reawakening of epic proportions and more nerve jangling than smacking a crocodile in the face with your love spuds.

I've missed motorcycling more than I care to admit. The sadistic glee of swearing at myopic drivers inside the safety of your lid, dodging effortlessly through gaps smaller than a Rizla and screaming "Tally-ho! Make way for me!" - nothing compares to this sweet rapture.

There are some downsides though. When you sit down for a days work after something like that, nothing moves at the pace you want it to. An epoch will pass as you impatiently wait for electricity to plod its weary way from the start button of your computer to it's internals. Emails open with glacial swiftness and the simple act of filling a cup with hot water takes on biblically epic proportions. The world wants to get a fecking move on, because I don't have time for it to be taking the piss.

Downside number two is that I don't get so much reading done. Say what you will about the inefficiencies of the railways, they sure do make for handy travelling park benches, upon which to batter through a good book.
"But Simon," I hear you say, "you can read when you get home!"
I look at you as if you just suggested my earlier referenced crocodile/wedding tackle interface would be a ripping thing to do, then reply;
"Negative, evening time is when I shoot pixelated things in the face as they attempt to take over my television."
I'd like to thank the lovely Gayle for perpetuating this electronic crack habit with the recent purchase of Mass Effect 3.

There's always going to be a period of adjustment when you change your routine, but this change is so far and so fast, that I think I may have left my sense of proportion on the back seat of the number 35 bus. The heady thrill of navigating the psychopathic delights of Leicester's ring road will no doubt wear thin, but for now I'm higher than a Lego Space Shuttle.

So, life is once more back to roller-coaster time, the highs of independent travel offset by the inevitable cold turkey comedown one could only experience after battling through evening traffic.

The only difference is that I'm now the one controlling the roller-coaster - all it takes is a flick of the wrist.

That there inspiration

It's a wily thing. One minute it's there, the next it sneaks away with the speed of a thought ninja, leaving you with that look on your face that you only get when a wave of some unfathomable stench washes over your nose for an instance and you're left thinking 'Was that ME?'

It's safe to say I have all my best ideas at all the wrong moments. Although I've taken to carrying a small notebook with me to jot down words or ideas that smash into my brain like particles joyriding the LHC, I often find I'm without it at the times I need it. Like in the shower or halfway to the train station.

I have one of those brains that can craft something that sounds majestic. An idea, a piece of dialogue, a title, but unlike normal brains that pass information neatly from short term memory into the deeper parts of the mind, mine sneezes then notices something shiny.

It's part of the reason I've taken so well to writing. If I have these wonderful thoughts in front of a keyboard, they can be recorded post haste, however it never really seems to work like that. It's like the inspirational part of my brain waits for the most inopportune moment, that time when you sink into yourself and all external thoughts are null and void. Only then do I find the quiet I need to build something, to pick and choose the right word or phrase to make my meaning clear.

Then promptly forget it.

Of Elder Gods

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents."
When he first penned these words in 1926, I'm pretty sure H.P. Lovecraft had somehow transcended time and space itself to watch me in the kitchen at half past eight this morning. For at that very moment, my feeble cerebellum was furiously cogitating several billion things at once, chief among which were the following -

"I'm going to miss my bus"

"Are these trousers ironed?"

"What's for lunch?"

"I haven't brushed my teeth yet.""

STICK YOU, SCALY GREEN BASTARD!"

Ones of these is not like the others.

Our humble tale begins one day hence, when upon leaving the house, I unwittingly unleashed the terrible fury of one Elder god against another. What titanic forces, you ask, could possibly rent asunder the mythical bonds of reality that separate pantheons of beings mighty enough to sow life upon the cosmos, or throw comical lightning bolts from fluffy white clouds? 

Most likely, it was the postman's fault.

You see, our lovely chunk of a dog, Hera, does not like the postman. He has the audacity to put things through her letterbox that might harm me, such as job offers, fragile parcels or envelopes containing cash. So, in an act of doggy derring-do (having savaged the foolish bank statement that had darkened our door), Hera pursued her Hi-Vis clad arch-nemesis in the only fashion she could - leaping nobly upon the low front window sill to ensure no further transgressions. 

Hurr hurr

It was in this brave and defiant act that Hera found herself locked in pitched battle with a malevolent entity that had recently taken up residence in our fair abode. You see, birthday presents in this house come in the variety of 'Toys, Games and Other Cool Shit We Wanted When We Were 13'. So, it was with pride that I presented wee Cthulhu to Gayle on her birthday and he was received with all the good grace one expects when being handed a gruesome, tentacled sea-god of ones own. Utter joy.

For the uninformed, here's Cthulhu, nestled between a wolf-headed motorcycle and Jack Skellington's metal wine-stopper head.

The Thing That Should Not Be - or in this case, The Thing That Should Not Be Left Anywhere The Dog can Get At It, came out of the exchange rather badly. Stories heard in my youth, that to merely look upon Cthulhu was to drown in the depths of madness, clearly didn't take into account being faced with a creature who thinks it is perfectly acceptable to eat dog poo.

And so we come full circle, with me stood in the kitchen, all wrinkly trousers and morning breath, trying vainly to glue a scaly arm back onto the squamous and unutterable king of deep sleepers. I'm sure it's a situation we've all found ourselves in before, convinced that all the subsequent decisions we made that day would be akin to hiring a serial arsonist to guard the matches in a fireworks factory.

But no, this clash of the titans ended in good way (unlike the recent cinematic remake). For from this epic struggle between man, Loctite and proto-Zoidberg, emerged a stronger, more confident me. A man with the unerring certainty that his day could get no worse. One that would not settle simply for the four words "It was a good day.", where too many would suffice.

In his house at Nottingham, daft Simon sits typing.

Don't say you weren't warned

Holy shit - look how much fun this little guy is having.

There. I'm glad I got that out of my system. Now back to the frankly more ludicrous prospect of you people paying attention to what I'm writing.

It's fair to say that at the moment, my spare time is somewhat limited. Labouring under the prospect that work is work no matter where you find it, I currently find my self locked in battle with the pleasures of public transport for a plentiful portion of my day. For someone used to the breathtaking independence of motorcycling, this is akin to locking me in an airtight room, then filling that room with well-dressed morons, whose bags, coats and other detritus are somehow a substitute for a real person in a seat on a crowded train.

I'm not averse to the general public, after all, some of them are people I don't want to beat senseless with a flaming brick. However, I'm happy to hold these witless sacks of human cargo responsible for my being sans transport, instead of my utter lack of sanity when told - "It's icy out, you don't need to give me a lift to the station." The manly tradition of selective hearing surprisingly let me down on that one.
Just a glitch, gents.

Laying aside my overwhelming vehemence for commuters, I find myself on the brink of returning to the road and it's inherent thrills. A momentary lapse in confidence held me back (coupled with the ever delightful British weather), but I'm tantilisingly close to wearing the same expression as our furry friend up there - something between sheer, pant-wetting terror and meglomaniacal ecstasy.

Why, you ask? Because filtering through traffic is like doing the Death Star Trench Run twice a day. Except the TIE Fighter pilots are heading towards you with mobile phones crushed between their ears and shoulders, while they jam greasy McMuffins and foul Costa coffee into their maws, steering their lethal death craft with their knees.

S'fun, you know?

"I'll have to call you back, Darth I'm snarled up on the A52."

The point being (and I may say that a lot of the coming months), I'm looking to win back time. More time means more chance to fill this squalid corner of the web with my incessant rambling, something which can only end badly for us all.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

Last minute panic

The amount of author's quotations on procrastination could ironically fill a rather large book.

I made this realisation while searching for a witty and intelligent opening to this blog. In the absence of inspiration I settled, as I quite often do, on the teachings of Bill Watterson.

"Creativity can't be turned on and off like a faucet, I need to be in the right mood."
"What mood is that?"
"Last minute panic."

Without getting too deep into the psychology behind unloading the contents of my brain in print, I think it's safe to say I've put it off for far too long. A childhood immersed in the finest pop culture the eighties had to offer, long nights of nerd-drenched role-playing and meager dabblings in fiction, via play-by-email or aborted comic book projects, had all given me the taste - but the will and determination was sadly absent.

It became apparent through the years that lunacy-fueled inspiration is only a small part of what makes a good writer. Graced with this knowledge I applied a modicum of sense and set out to develop 'The Craft', taking an Open University course to learn the mysterious alchemy and science involved. It was a brutal first insight and while I feel I achieved some good things, it helped me develop more good excuses to leave the keyboard.

In a way, it's quite a satisfying revelation. Does my professional approach to putting things off arm me with the tools I need to be a great writer?

From my first foray into literature - a frantically scribbled school competition entry at the tender age of ten (result - "It's brilliant, but too late."), I've dodged, excused and wormed my way out of having a serious stab at this literary nonsense. I frequently allowed myself to get in the way, blaming everything but me.

Well, me, enough is quite frankly enough.

I have a few folks to blame for this sudden urge to write again, all of whom shall be named, shamed and rightfully rewarded as this blog progresses. The meat of that progress will be practice. Daily insights, nonsense, and unadulterated word-count, baby. Just a selfish record of my efforts to simply sit down and touch the keyboard.
Read, comment, castigate or cajole me if you must.

So, here it begins. No pretensions, no forethought, just a daily stream of practice, insights and the occasional picture of a cat doing something hilarious.