May May’s 2009: Part One.

Hello blog, its nice to see you. Sorry for the absence, I’ve been meaning to update for several days now but the weather is, to put it bluntly, shite and the heating isn’t working properly. It’s not broken, just not putting out much heat, so I’ve spent the last week wrapped in so many layers I can barely move, trying to get as close to the fire as possible without actually being on fire and not being in the best mood to write. Besides what am I going to write about ? I meant to post a review of Stephen K Amos who I saw at the end of last month, but all I can remember is the enjoying myself despite the boiling hot venue, which isn’t a very detailed review. The list of things I have to write about today seems dull and boring and theres only so much I can write about the fecking weather before I find myself on a plane to Australia with startlingly overdrawn bank account to pay for a one way ticket (though I would only moan about how hot it is once there). So its December and the thing on everyone’s mind is the fact that it’s nearly Christmas and a new year and I’m stuck for subjects because Christmas and new year scare me. But then it struck me, every TV show, website, magazine, newspaper is bound to do one of those ‘Review of the Year’ type things, so why not do the same thing! I am nothing if not willing to blend in with the masses. Hopefully I can get enough out of this for two blogs, that way I won’t have a giant space between updates again and have something to do on train up to Scotland next week.I shall be slightly cheating and using Wikipedia’s entry for 2009 because I can barely remember what happened yesterday, let alone 12 months ago.

January

Personally my January 2009 was…. stable. I had a pleasant enough job, despite the fact that working with horses is probably more stressful than working with people. Mainly because most people don’t live outside and need giant, heavy coats that need adjusting twice a day. Horses in the winter are a pain, especially ten of them, two who were on medication. They don’t put themselves in their stable when the weathers really bad and they don’t feed themselves on Christmas day. They also have a nasty habit of making you love them and not really care that you’re outside in a blizzard, flood or terrifying thunderstorm. In the wider world, there was the inauguration of Barack Obama. I expect one day to be asked by my children where I was when he gave his speech, to which I will be forced to answer “At Great-Grans house watching it on the telly, to be interrupted every minute or so by Great Gran switching to Channel 4 to keep up with Deal or No Deal.” And when they ask me what that is, I shall change the subject and tell them to go to bed. No matter what time it is. There was also the ongoing Global Economic Crisis or ‘Moneygeddon’ as Charlie Brooker called it. However whilst the news was acting like it was the end of the civilised world, I shrugged and wondered exactly how it would affect me. I have no savings, my close family have no large investments or their own properties. It seemed the most I would have to worry about is the closure of Woolworths, the only store in my silly little town that sells newly released DVDs and X-Box games.

February

I find it very interesting that Wikipedia has events for 2010, Wiki can tell the future it seems. The big news for most of February was the snow. Oh good lord the snow. As Wiki puts it “The UK struggles to cope with its heaviest snowfalls since 1991.” and we did struggle. News reporters described it as “arctic”, now I’ve never been to the Arctic but I’m almost sure theres more than five inches of snow there. Other popular, overly dramatic, exaggerating words for the weather were “treacherous”, “deadly”, “perilous” and “threatening”. Which only served to fuel the national panic that we were going to be snowed in until May, die of starvation and those willing to risk the roads would immediately be killed by cars that had literally flown out of control. Personally, I found myself with less work to do, no sweeping because everything was covered in white stuff, no water because the taps were frozen, so I spent my working hours building snowmen, naming them and making up their entire life stories, before sneaking off to catch up with sleep, hidden in the hay stack using my huge weatherproof coat as a blanket.

March

My foolish belief that the recession would not affect me came back to bite me in the behind this month as it became apparent that when my job would not last forever. Of course I knew this as I was covering for someones maternity leave, but once that was over I assumed I would continue in my previous role. I wouldn’t. So I spent March enjoying the liberties I was allowed with this job, whilst simultaneously dreading being unemployed again. Except the last time I’d been unemployed there hadn’t been a global economic crisis and the UK wasn’t in recession with news reports of how many thousands more people had lost their job every day. I did however find time for a day out in London, to go and see Watchmen on the IMAX. I’d never been before and wasn’t aware of just how huge the screen was. We had also left booking the tickets a bit late and as a result were startlingly close to the screen. Watchmen was perhaps the wrong film to see on that giant screen, four rows from the front, I’d read the graphic novel, I knew that there was a giant naked blue man in it and I knew that not laughing at him would be next to impossible with my two dear friends with me. However we performed admirably and didn’t crack up until about 20 minutes before the end, when we accidently made eye contact. We are silly and immature. I enjoyed the film though and thought Zach Snyder had done as good a job as possible considering the source material, the fans, the studio and the normal cinema goers. Lol blue winkle.

April

In April I lost my job and I lost my favourite horse. As I mentioned earlier I’m very attached the horses I worked with, having known most of them since I was 9 years old. I’ve lived and worked here twelve years, over half of my life and while the horses come and go, more than half of them were there when we moved into our house. In some sense, they were my friends and I’ve certainly known some of them longer then a lot of my human friends. Though I didn’t like to have favourites, it was impossible not to and Squeak was always my favourite. She was gentle, kind, highly intelligent and had a character to rival most people. I found that if you were making a fuss of her and then stopped and pretended to be asleep on the wall in front of her, she would nudge, nuzzle and push me until I started paying attention to her again. But not in a needy, selfish way, it was more like she was checking to see that I hadn’t suddenly died. One day in April, Squeak was hanging around by the fence more than usual. I knew something was wrong straight away, despite being a friendly a horse, she was still a greedy Connemara and wouldn’t miss out on grass when it was there, especially after a winter of hay and snow. My instincts were right and what was initially dismissed as colic got worse and worse as she was unable to eat or even move very far. The vets were stumped and eventually opened her up to find her riddled with cancer. On the day she was put down, she was given the field with the longest grass and she was grazing when I went to say goodbye. She knew something was wrong, there was none of her boisterous nudging or showing me where she wanted scratching, she just stood and let me scratch her ears. When I left her she watched me walk all the way back down the field and didn’t start eating again until I was out of sight. Three days later I was unemployed and I didn’t even have Squeak to talk to about it.

May

Oh May, the month of my birth and the month of my surname. The subject of oh so many jokes from people who think I’ve never heard it before. The first time I gave blood I was asked my surname and date of birth by at least five different people, every single one of them made some sort of comment about the fact that my surname a month of birth were the same like I was some sort of punchline. Once, whilst setting up a bank account, the man asked my name, when I told him he said “Wouldn’t it be funny if your birthday was in May”. No, I thought. Though he had the good grace to look slightly embarrassed when I told him, I was in fact born on the 28th of May. Though I’m only offended by strangers joking about it, my friend Katie changed my middle name to ‘May’ about six years ago and to this day she still calls me Sarah May May and the production company I will one day own when I’m hugely rich and successful, will be called ‘May May Productions’ hence the name of this here blog. May 2009 was largely uneventful for me. I didn’t even manage to have a proper birthday party, unless you count the gathering I had with my family. There was cake, so I guess that was enough for me. I didn’t get dangerously drunk, as is tradition at 21st birthdays, just watched a huge stack of comedy DVDs instead, since all my friends were at university so caught up in finals that I would have been annoyed with them if they’d taken time out of revision to have a silly party with me. In the real world, the MP’s expenses row broke and it made me wish I could afford a Twix bar, let alone have a job that allowed me to claim on back as expenses.

June

I don’t really remember much about June, or July for that matter. I spent the days in a blanket of misery and depression. I didnt go to the doctors or do anything about it, I just assumed that a job would solve all my problems. I was also a little afraid to admit it, perhaps thinking that no one would believe me, assuming I was just attention seeking. I didn;t want to get out of bed, I lost a stone in weight (not easy for someone as skinny as me) actively avoided meetings with friends and didn’t even turn up to a close friends birthday party, claiming that I was fed up and embarrassed at asking people for lifts to and from everywhere, but really not wanting to spend time with a large group of people who would all inevitably ask how my life was. I did manage to get some part-time work, but that was washing up in a small dark room, which did nothing but exacerbate my misery. I don’t remember much about the news either, annoyingly. I believe that we had our first cases of swine flu and everyone made jokes about curly tails and snouts, jokes that are somehow still going at the moment. Of course the press informed us that the UK was going to be a deserted plagueland within weeks, yet here we are. Or that did happen, I survived and have in fact gone insane, everything in world around me is an elaborate hallucination. I won’t discount that theory yet.

Well it seems like half way through the year is as good a time as any to stop. I realise as I write this that 2009 has been pretty shite and instead of wondering why the year passed so quickly, I should be thankful that it’s nearly gone and I can look forward to all my success in 2010. I’ll write part two at some point and writing this has given me a few ideas for other stuff to write too, huzzah my writer’s block has gone on holiday…. for now.

Belinda is a Bitch

Hello. Its been nearly two weeks since I updated so here is an update. Firstly I apologise for the last blog, it was written on a train full of screaming kids that made sleep impossible. My solution to that was by listening to loud music but that made it impossible to concentrate properly, I forgot half the stuff I had planned (I even forgot a spell check) and was generally in a bad mood (seven hour journeys do that to me). I don’t expect this one to be much better, I’ve woken up with a temperature, a runny nose and the general feeling that I’m ill. Great, thats just what I need. Secondly, for the purposes of this blog I will be giving my brain a name. I’m going to talk about it like it’s a separate entity and behave as if everyone does this. From this point, ‘Belinda’ is my brain.

Belinda is a bitch. As some of you may be aware, I’m taking part in National Novel Writing Month. It started very well, I wrote 2000 words on the first day and then it started to go down hill, I was seeing my Dad for the first time since April, I could hardly sit around with my face in a laptop, some might consider that to be anti-social. I had expected to fall behind in those first few days, what I didnt expect was how difficult it would be to get back on track. I’ve written a few hundred here, a thousand there but I’m well short of what I should be on by now. This is where Belinda comes in. Instead of helping me write, she’s thought of something different to write and only allowed me to think of that whilst completely blocking any progress in my NaNo novel. She takes delight in waiting until 1AM when I’m on the verge of falling asleep and then as soon as my head touches the pillow, running around inside my head hitting a frying pan with a hammer screaming. Instead of letting me sleep, Belinda likes to write stories that I’m not meant to be working on or write blogs in my head (like she did last night, with the one I’m now writing). She’ll try and name characters from books I read ten years ago or work out how many seconds it is until Matt Berry’s Heaven gig or sing my favourite songs backwards. Meanwhile, Barry, Belinda’s sensible friend, is telling me that I need to sleep because I’ve got relatives coming the next day and I need to tidy the house and not fall asleep in my chair at 7PM.  Even when I’m not trying to sleep, Belinda will come up with strange and random ideas that I have to act upon. Last week she suggested that I reread the Harry Potter books for the first time in about three years. I have no idea why she suggested that, the last time I thought about Harry Potter was when I saw the latest (rather underwhelming) film, in August. Of course I ignored her at first, but now I’m half way through the fifth book, resisting Belinda is pointless. (Sidenote: Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone came out 13 years ago, I read it the year it was released. I’m so old).

Of course I can’t blame my lack of writing entirely on Belinda. My X-Box 360 has finally been repaired after three months of being bricked. Obviously I needed to celebrate this fact by playing every game on my shelf and managed to spend five hours yesterday afternoon on Fallout 3, a game which, according to my other saved games, I’ve already spent well over 100 hours playing. That may seem like a lot… and it is. Then theres actual stuff I’ve been busy with, real life stuff not just thirteen year old children’s books and games about a nuclear wasteland. I’ve been looking after my poor broken wristed Nana, whose had to go to the hospital a few times and needed someone to carry her shopping, so naturally unemployed oldest granddaughter is the number one candidate. Wait that makes me sound bitter, I’m not, secretly I quite enjoy it, people watching at the hospital may seem morbid to some people but its great for relieving waiting room boredness. They also do a mean cheese roll in their canteen.

So there I’ve written nearly 1000 words explaining why I’ve been unable to write 1000 words about something else. I’m sure I’ll catch up towards the end of the month when the deadline approaches. Belinda used to do the same thing to me when I tired to do homework more than a day before the deadline, distracting me with other things until I found myself panicking the day before because I still hadn’t done it. I was hoping she’d have grown out of that particular habit by now but apparently not, she is after all, a bitch.

Scotland, Wrists and The Prologue

I was hoping I’d come back from my trip to Scotland with a fascinating acount of the many museums, shops and old buildings I’d been in. Alas things never go as you’d hope in real life. Things started off ok on Thursday, the train had less stops then usual,  the carriage was so quiet I could actually sleep and three trains, two car trips and six hours later we were at my Dad’s house (about 20 minutes outside of Edinburgh). After dinner my Dad and stepmum announced that they had a surprise and by 8pm we were waiting outside in the pouring rain for The City of the Dead Underground tour of the vaults under Edinburgh. Our guide was a David Tennant look-a-like called Gerry (with a G), who was great. Last time we visited we went to the Edinburgh dungeon, which was more aimed at scaring people and I didn’t really learn anything. Being the enormous nerd that I am, I was hoping to learn about the people who lived in Edinburgh and the history of the place, not have scary dressed up people jump out at me and make me scream. David Tennant-a-like was enthusiastic, funny and informative. And someone jumped out and made us jump before the end. Everyone’s happy! Oh and a man fell over on a very steep hill and I laughed so much I nearly cried. I’m an evil person.

On Friday we didn’t do much, giving me the chance to do lots of novel planning and we had plenty planned for Saturday until the evening when my Nan returned from the loo and announced that she’d just had a fall and that she thought she’d broken her wrist. Seeing as everyone was either too drunk or lacking a driving license, we had to wait until Saturday to take her to the hospital and instead of exploring shops and musuems, I spent three hours in the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary accident and emergency waiting room. I don’t blame my Nan, I got lots of palnning work done and spotted my future husband (he was so pretty, and a doctor!)… But I prefer shopping!

On Sunday it was novel time, sadly after just 1100 words I had to go and play Trivial Pursuit and then couldn’t get started again. It seems novel will have to wait until tomorrow and I’ve got lots of catching up to do, I should be on 6000 by now, but oh well, I have plenty of time and I’ve written the prologue so I guess I’ll post it… Please remember I haven’t read it back and I’ll probably add to it when I get back to noveling tomorrow, its probably rubbish, don’t judge me!

Prologue

“One day, something amazing is going to happen to me.” Thought Sally as she walked back from the job centre. She thought about her 21 years on Earth and how distinctly average they had been. She had done nothing special or anything remarkable to make her stand out from the crowd. Sally caught a look at her reflection in a shop window. She was average height, not tall, not short. Her hair was long, hanging loose to cover her ears which she always thought were too big. She was wearing jeans, trainers a hoodie and a fleecy jacket over that, feeling the cold  despite the weather being quite pleasant. She crossed the road on her way to Tescos to buy some groceries and continued musing her life. She had grown up with normal, hard-working parents on wages good enough to pay the bills and not much more. Lived in a string of average houses in an average town. Attended normal schools, where she had received average grades (10 C’s and GCSE and 4 C’s at A Level, nothing if not consistent). She had hopes and dreams and fears and aspirations but never really been able to act on them due to her extreme mediocrity. She had applied to university without really considering whether it was right for her and more because all her friends were doing it and as a result spent six months living 120 miles away from home, miserable and depressed. That was three years ago, all her friends who had stayed at university were now graduating and getting jobs. Sally however had spent the last three years in dead end job after dead end job. Receptionist, secretary, data entry, and working with horses, the only job she’d really enjoyed, but it had only been maternity cover and seven months later she was back where she started; penniless and bored.

As Sally rounded the corner to Tesco there was a commotion across the street, she looked and saw a man being pursued by three police officers, who were shouting at the man to stop, a strange sight in this town, she thought and everyone else thought the same apparently as nearly all of the street turned to watch the chase, no one trying to stop the running man, despite some people being closer then the police. Turning away from the kerfuffle, Sally went into Tesco and got her shopping list out. Milk, bread, toilet roll. “God even my shopping is average” she murmured, before picking up a basket and getting the things she needed and continued pondering her life. The last four months had been difficult, work was nearly impossible to find, every job that did advertise had fifty other applicants with more experience, better grades, more useful skills and Sally would be lucky to get a letter back from the employer telling her that she’s useless. Hell, at this stage she’d welcome a torrent of abuse, at least it would confirm her existence. Sally picked up two pints of milk. She spent her considerable free time reading books, watching films and playing video games, hoping against hope that one day she’d be swallowed by these fantasies. Of course it never happened. No amount of heel clicking, wishing upon stars or electrocuting herself with the television power cable in order to enter the world of films had helped. Though admittedly that last one had been an accident. An owl had never delivered details of a school for wizards, she’d never inherited a magical ring and she’d never met a man who travelled through time and space in a blue box. Sally tried not to resent the real world for being so boring but it was difficult. She collected some bread. When the world of fantasy had let her down, Sally had pursued jobs that actually interested her. So far trying to be an author, actress, musician, comedian, director, producer or even tea maker for a tea maker on a film set had been about as successful as slaying the mystical dragon of eternal pain for the king of Gongoria. As Sally headed for the cake aisle looking for something delicious to cheer her up she noticed a crowd of people in the frozen good section, as she got closer she heard a man gibbering inanely, not much of what he was saying made any sense but as he writhed around the floor he suddenly made direct eye contact with Sally and uttered “Everything is going to change”. Sally blinked and backed off as the paramedics arrived. She headed for the checkouts feeling slightly disconcerted and told herself she was being silly, he was just a crazy old man who needed help. Sally paid for her shopping and exited the shop carrying a plastic bag. When she got outside, she saw in the sky a black dot. As she stared, it moved around erratically but no one else seemed to have seen it. Sally shook her head, maybe the craziness the man in Tesco had had was catching, she decided that going home was her best bet before anything else odd happened. She stepped out into the road, looked right too late and saw she was right in the path of a rather large oncoming bus.

This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.

I don’t dare read it back, I’ll probably cringe a lot. If you like it please comment. If you don’t like it, please don’t comment, I might cry! Hope you’re well (one day I’ll find a good way to sign off of my blog) Thanks and bye!

Housekeeping

Hello blog its been a while since I updated you, sorry about that. The last week has been a bit busy (for once) and every spare moment I’ve had free I’ve felt guilty for writing anything (including Tweets and MSN messages) that isn’t planning for my novel for National Novel Writing Month. I don’t have a specific theme today, but I’ve got a few things I want to say. This shall be a general housekeeping blog!

NaNoWriMo

A week today I shall have started writing my novel, this thought doesn’t scare me as much as it did last week, I finally had a workable idea thats got me excited, I just want November to start now! The plan is to write a chapter a day and then post it here for any and all to see. Feedback is appreciated but if you do read it please keep in mind NaNo is about quantity, not quality. I might read it back for spelling or grammar mistakes but I won’t be editing it, probably meaning it will be crap, long-winded and rambling. I’ve also never posted anything I’ve written (apart from the rest of this blog) online for anyone to see, please be gentle with me!

Copyright

You may have noticed the sparkly new copyright section on the right. Theres not really anyway to explain it without sounding sound like I’m either extremely paranoid or have my head stuck up my own arse, but I’ll try to anyway. I don’t think for a second that anyone cares about my blog enough to steal it (though apparently automated bots do it anyway) but when I start posting my novel up here, I want it to be protected. Again that sounds like I think it will be good enough to actually steal, but the paranoid crazies are running rampant in my brain. And as the old saying goes: Better safe then sorry (and not being able to afford legal fee’s). So I decided to protect everything here with a simple Creative Commons copyright license and now I have a special logo to go with it!

Scotland!

I’m going to Scotland on Thursday, I probably won’t post again before then (but never say ‘probably won’t'). I’ll be gone until Tuesday which is day three of NaNo, for anyone actually looking forward to reading my novel (lol) I shall post it when I’m back, or if I can get wireless access in Scotland or on the train.  I always enjoy my expeditions up to Scotland to see my dad, it doesn’t matter that it’s always cold and I always have to wear two layers of clothing in the house and even more should I be brave enough to leave it. There is always the shortbread and Empire biscuits (the best things in the world!) to make up for the weather. And oh yeah I get to see my dad for the first time since April, thats always good!

Thank you once more for reading dear reader, it’s quite a short one today, I don’t really have anything interesting to say. I could moan about jobs again or tell the horrifying story about the mouse I caused to die very slowly or proclaim my love for Matt Berry or rant about an advert, but I fear I would bore you. Instead I’ll leave you with a very vague synopsis for my novel, so vague because I haven’t worked out the exact details yet (like oh say any of the characters names), but its an idea of whats to come.

The story of a girl who finds herself in situation after situation, some surreal and magical, others deadly serious, but how much, if any, is real?

Like I said, vague, but its something isn’t it! See you next week, ta-ta for now.

Two thousand words a day keeps the sleep away.

Three years ago my friend Katie wrote the first part of a story and sent it to myself and three other people with instructions to add a part then reply. We did, we wrote a lot, over four months we wrote what seemed like an award-winning, bestselling 500 page novel. Of course in reality what we wrote was pages of silly in-jokes, ridiculous plot and more in-jokes. Whilst reading it for the first time in at least a year last night, I briefly thought about posting it here, a lot of it is quite funny, and a lot of it is also evidence for having us sectioned . Anyway the point I’m laboriously getting to is that once I’d finally copy pasted it all into Google Docs (it saves everything online, you can’t fool me into losing everything again hard drive!) I did a quick word count and I was shocked by what I saw. This epic piece of badly spelled, rambling nonsense that took four months to write was only 9120 words long. Which bought home the startling reality of what I’ve gotten myself into next month when I take part in National Novel Writing Month. More than five times that amount in a month, on my own.

It’s just over two weeks away, I haven’t started planning. All I know about the plot is that Princess Floss and her motorbike will make an appearance. I can knock off an 800 word blog every three or four days but this is 1700 words a day, everyday for 30 days straight. I started to panic a wee bit when I realised this. However I shall persevere to prove to myself that I can finish it, besides too many people know I’m doing it now. So I implore you dear blog readers, throw a word, a phrase, a character, a ridiculous plot, a reference, anything at me and I solemnly vow it shall appear in my ‘novel’ at some point. It will also get my brain working so I can at least pretend to plan and maybe a plot shall form if I have enough half baked ideas. You will also have my undying appreciation and I’ll e,r I don’t know, dedicate it to everyone that contributes or create a shine in your honour.

As a completely unrelated sidenote, last night I dreamt, among other things, that one of my teeth fell out and in the hole there was some sort of black hole effect which would suck in all of my bottom lip. And singer, songwriter, actor extraordinaire Matt Berry was cast in some sort of horrendous Highschool Musical film as a 16-year-old jock type, it was so vivid that it took me a good hour after I’d woken up to convince myself that it wasn’t real. I’m never eating cheese again.

Hate is a strong word…

But it doesn’t stop us from using it. Today I’ve been feeling more low then usual for reasons that I can’t go into on a public blog, which makes me sound like a criminal or secret agent, I can only wish it was that interesting. Anyway its put me in a fairly sour mood. I have this list of things I see or hear or think of that might make a half-decent blog and whilst reading it earlier I noticed a few of them share a theme and aren’t long enough for a single blog. As a result I’m going to pour my current mood into this List Of Things I Hate.

Nintendo Adverts.

God I hate Nintendo and I really hate their advertising team. Oooohhhh look at the happy family of a Mum, Dad and two children (a girl and a boy). They’re all normal because their unbroken family splashed out on £170 worth of a child’s toy. Look everyone Beyonce’s playing a DS, it’s not just spotty, overweight boys that plays games consoles. But wait, girls don’t play games do they? No of course not which is why theres cookery lessons and baby simulators for the girls. Thats what they’re interested in. But wait, you’re not a stereotypical family, a girl or an international superstar? Well then you must be old, heres an astoundingly patronising advert telling you that yes, its ok to play games and be over 40, but you don’t know how to work such witchcraft so we’ll explain it slowly, you know, because you’re old.

Like I said I hate Nintendo adverts. They seem to be stuck in a world where games consoles are for geeky teenage boys. I’ve had a console since I was four years old, I am a girl and my favourite games contain absolutely no cookery or babies. I admit I owned a Wii and I still own a DS. I was dazzled by the Wii’s shiny way of doing things until I realised that actually waving my arms around like a demented windmill is only fun for an hour or so before you get RSI or your arms simply drop off. I traded it in for an X-Box 360 and never once looked back. I still have my DS because I like doing Sudoku on it and I really like Scribblenauts (more about that in another blog). Then Nintendo announce stupid add-on after stupid add-on, the latest being an excercise bike. You know whats like an excercise bike? An excercise bike! Or even better, an actual bike, but no god forbid we should actually go outside to excercise. Like I said, I hate Nintendo adverts.

English Weather.

And obvious one here, seeing as everyone in England hates the weather, if we didn’t have that then no one would talk and the country would fall into silence. But does it have to be so changeable? If I put an extra blanket on my bed because I was cold the previous night, then I’ll be too hot that night resulting in lost sleep and bad moods. Its October now it should have settled into just ‘cold’. I’m not very fond of cold weather but at least I know to wear fifty jumpers and gloves before I venture outside. So please weather, everyone knows you’re going to get cold, its what you do. Could you just stop making it randomly warm when I have five layers on my bed (not an exaggeration).

Job Applications

Twenty-three applications in the last month and I’ve not heard back from a single employer? Did I print my CV on that joke ink that disappears after an hour? Or perhaps somehow changed my email settings to ‘Mission Impossible’, which makes my emails explode five seconds after being read. At this point I’d be happy with “Lolz u iz suxOr” at least it’d be an acknowledgement of my existence.

The Grill On My Oven

Oh c’mon all I wanted was a toasted teacake, not a half burnt beyond recognition, half not toasted at all teacake. Silly, I know but its my list.

Sleep

I hate sleep, I hate trying to sleep, I hate staying asleep and I hate having no sleep. I’m writing this on the three hours of solid sleep and 2 hours of interrupted waking up every twenty minutes sleep I managed to get last night. At night I worry about things I can’t do anything about, when I’m asleep I have strange, vivid dreams that affect my mood all day and when I wake up I can’t get back to sleep. Today I’ve spent my day stumbling around half dead. The first thing my Mum said to me this morning was “Oh you look terrible!” Thanks Mum. At least tonight I will probably be able to sleep and then I wont sleep tomorrow and the vicious circle starts again.

So theres a few of the things I hate, there are many more but I don’t want to bring the mood down… To balance the negativitiy, I point you in the direction of Richard Herring’s new FREE podcast which I urge you all to listen to. It made me laugh even in the appaling mood I’m in. It can be found here and on Itunes here. Thank you for reading, I am now going to do some planning for NaNoWriMo. Ta-ta for now!

Flailing and failing.

This is the second blog I’ve written today, the first one was so depressing it nearly made me cry while I was writing and I decided not to publish it. I didn’t start this blog for sympathy and even though I need to get a rant out of my system, I can’t follow ‘Joey’  with a depressing, miserable whine about how depressed and miserable I am. So maybe I’ll publish it next week, or never. Depends how I’m feeling. Instead I’m going to write about whatever pops into my head in the next five seconds and then jump around, flailing from topic to topic after that.

My internet access suddenly recovered from its snails pace, offensively slow speed this week and in celebration and fear that it might slow down again, I decided to watch a few shows that I’ve been meaning to catch up with on 4OD. Free Agents, a wonderfully bleak comedy dealing with divorce, depression, bereavement, loneliness and heartache, starring Stephen Mangan, Sharon Horgan, Anthony Head and Matthew Holness. This series managed to completely pass me by when it first aired back in February, despite starring Holness and Mangan who I would watch paint a wall or make a sandwich. I managed to watch the whole lot of it on Tuesday night (curse you C4 and your six episode runs of 22 minute shows. 2 hours and 12 minutes is barely a feature film) and rather excellent it was too. As someone who is currently in a less than positive mindset, its black humour, dark outlook on love and frequent crying outbursts from Mangans character made me warm to it quickly. I don’t want to spoil too much because you should all go and watch it right now.

Next month I’m going to take part in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), a ‘competition’ to write a 50,000 word novel before midnight on the 30th of November. I say competition but theres no prize and lots of people win, in fact anyone that hits 50,000 words wins. I was going to do it last year but I actually had a job and I barely had enough time to play the five billion Xbox games that came out in November last year, let alone write my first novel. But this year things are different, unless my circumstances change dramatically in the next 3 weeks, I’m going to have an alarming amount of free time, and what better way to fill it then by writing a novel and typing an average of 1667 words a day for 30 days will certainly put me off ever blogging, writing or even Twittering for a long time! I’ve been juggling a few ideas around in my head but nothings certain yet, if anyone has any ideas or advice or hints or tips, then use the magic comment box or tweet me or psychically send me a message and we’ll see if I actually start to write a novel on the 1st of November.

Lastly a list of things that I’m looking forward to in whats left of 2009 because I need to remind myself that its worth getting out of bed tomorrow. Firstly Scribblenaughts arrives tomorrow, this makes me happy and I look forward to spending all of November solving puzzles with every object on Earth instead of writing a novel. Secondly I’m going to Cambridge with my friend Daniel next week. We’re both poor so we’re having a picnic with homemade sandwiches, shopping ironically, standing in the Apple shop imagining what it would be like to have an Iphone (No I will NOT call it an iPhone) and saying what we would buy if we hadn’t spent all of our money on the bus fair to get there. At the end of the month I am going to my Dad’s house in Scotland, the first time I’ve seen him since August. Where I will probably spend all my time playing Scribblenaughts, planning the novel I’ll fail to write and missing Twitter. November is a boring month which is why I’m planning to fail to write novel and then December is a good month. Even though its Christmas and I don’t really want to think about that yet, I’m also going to see Matt Berry performing live at Heaven with my dear fwend Henri. And it will be Heaven. I might possibly end up in Heaven (the other one).

So I’ve talked far too much and not really said anything, I hope you enjoyed it nonetheless. Next time I might write about something instead of rambling on too much. I’m going to get some lunch, for it is lunch time and I am hungry. Until next time!

Memoirs of a Vigilante Helicopter.

Perhaps against my better judgement I’m going to post my cartoon for children to teach them something. I might scare off my readers but I spent so long in Photoshop making the pictures, it would seem a shame to waste them. I attempted to scan in the original pictures which were far better but sadly drawn in biro and barely showed up on the scanner, so please excuse the useless mouse drawing, I can only wish I had a tablet, I would have been done in half the time. An explanation for its plain weirdness shall follow but without further ado I give you ‘Joey and the Hideously Malformed Deathocopter’.

Last year, or possibly the year before, I was up in Scotland in the most secluded part of the world I’ve ever been to, there was no mobile signal, internet or even television just a piano, board games and my notepad. One night I was doodling on my paper half listening to my Dad and Nan talk about a book my Dad had when he was little. No one seemed to be able to remember the name of the book. First it was ‘Joey the Helicopter’. So naturally I tried to envisage what ‘Joey the Helicopter’ was about. Firstly it was a children’s book, so it had to have a moral and teach a lesson. Second helicopters are cool, everyone, especially children, know this, vigilante helicopters are even cooler. But then, shock! It wasn’t called ‘Joey the Helicopter’, it was actually called ‘Joey and the Helicopter’. Now I had another character and a helicopter called Joey that I had to edit.

In my experience the best way to teach a child, or indeed anyone a lesson, is by scaring them senseless, Joey the helicopter became The Hideously Malformed Deathocopter and then this comic thing was born. Joey became an ASBO wielding chav that needed to be taught a lesson and hopefully I’ve taught a generation of young children that throwing bricks through windows or wearing a hood in the shopping centre is bad. You can see why I hesitated to put it online and I’m expecting the men in white coats to come a-knocking. I promise the next update will be less strange, I’m honestly not insane. Or on drugs. Why don’t you believe me? Come back!

P.S. You might think I’m odd but the spell check is ignoring the word ‘Deathocopter’ like its real. Who’s the strange one now eh?

Yes its me.

Get your impotent money here!

I was going to wait a day or so before updating again but this morning my laptop decided to completely randomly wipe its entire brain. Luckily I have everything important backed up online, when this happened the last time I lost ridiculous amounts of irreplaceable stuff and I’m not falling for that again! But trying to remember everything I had installed, let alone actually downloading and installing it is a pain. As a result I have a rather splendid headache forming and nothing to do except listen to music and pretend I can do the ‘Advanced’ Sudoku on my Nintendo DS, whilst waiting for Charlie Brookers Gameswipe (A show that manages to combine my love of Charlie Brooker and games).  And this laborious paragraph exists to explain why I find myself sitting in front of my sparkly new blog again.

This morning, once I had set my laptop on its course to remembering who it is, I sat down at our ancient desktop PC, an entity so dusty and filthy it would probably get up and leave the room if age was on its side. It’s primarily used by my brother who doesn’t seem to care that theres diseases born in it, or that its only a matter of time before it starts speaking to us (possibly to beg for death). I reluctantly logged on so I could check my emails, just incase one of the jobs I’d applied for last week had the decency to reply (Spoiler: They hadn’t), I tried to ignore the fact that the keyboard seemed to be sticky, even after wiping it down. Waiting for me was the usual selection of offers, newsletters, notifications and oh whats this 15% of $85,000,000 in exchange for my help? Now I know scam emails are hardly a new topic for discussion but it was easily one of the best I’d ever received. A few weeks ago I got an email from a Doctor Brown and his colleague Professor White, I thought that would take some beating but they lost points on asking me for every personal detail bar my shoe size, too obvious. This one was a little more discreet. Like telling the heard rending story of his father on his death bed or how he wants to “Invest in [my] base” (which sounds dirty to me). Yeah subtle. It’s also an “impotent sum of money”, the best of one of the many spelling errors and he signed off by saying “May God bless you if you assist me”, yay I really feel the love there.

I’d be interested to know the figures on how many people fall for these things. I’d like to think people wouldn’t be fooled by the appalling spelling and grammar, the insane life stories or the clearly made up names. Though what I’d like to know even more is how they get my email, why am I being targeted to get at least one of these messages a week, I’m not stupid and just because I’m desperately searching for a job doesn’t mean I blindly click links thrown at me because someone offers me money. Although if someone does want to give me money I don’t mind. So now this entry has served its purpose and now its only 15 minutes until my programmes on. Tomorrow I shall be less technology ranting and more posting a children’s morality tale with a terrifying twist and its a cartoon! Thanks for reading!

Gasp! A blog!

I’ve started this sentence what feels like fifty times, so I guess I’m starting as I mean to go on. Welcome to my blog, May May Productions named thus for reasons that I shall reveal in a later blog. If you’re here then Google probably played a horrible trick on you, sorry for that, just press back on your browser. If you’re still reading then that might mean you’re actually interested in what I have to say. What do I have to say I hear you ask. Well that depends, I’ve considered starting a blog for about three years, ever since the internet become a day-to-day thing and not just something to occupy me during free lessons at college. I’ve always hesitated, would I have anything to write about? Would I just end up ranting or whining? Would anyone at all on Earth bother to read it? But now I seem to be having a blog craving again and the thing responsible for this is a little thing called Twitter and the much bigger thing called the recession or Moneygeddon!

I’ve been a member of Twitter since the beginning of 2009, it was scary and confusing and I was too busy with work to spend more than ten minutes a day looking at it before running back to Facebook. But then Moneygeddon happened, I lost my job and I found myself having a lot more time on my hands and desperately needing to fill that time with something, anything to stave off the ever present threat of depression as I struggled to find a job. That thing was Twitter. I began using a lot and having the urge to press f5 even when away from my laptop. I like the 140 character limit Twitter has, but sometimes I wanted to expand on a point or deconstruct something or just generally rant, which brings me to why this blog now exists. I want to write, here seems as good a place as any to practice. I want to get all nostalgic for my Media studies days, I’ll deconstruct an advert. I want to shove my opinion in someones face, I’ll write a review. I’ve also got a small forests worth of notes, scripts, doodles, cartoons, stories, drawings, thoughts and jokes lying around that should allow me to keep updating for a while. Plus the thought of an online portfolio appeals to me incase theres ever some sort of horrendous fire.

So here it is, I’m mainly depending on my lovely Twitterer friends to read this and validate my existence but I hope more people will be interested in what I have to say, I’ve got a few things planned for updates. I’m not sure how often they will happen, secretly I want to do one a day, but I’d imagine that compulsion will fade fairly quickly. My first blog is dedicated to the lovely @Sarahfloss for encouraging me to finally start this. That way I can blame her if its terrible! Please enjoy, comment if you feel like it and have a good day. Bye!

This blog was made to the sounds of Matt Berry’s Witchazel, at least it was until I found myself being enormously distracted and had to turn it off.