I didn't end up doing NaNoWriMo in the end - I wasn't convinced I'd be able to stick to it, as although I had one or two loose ideas, nothing was compelling enough to drive me to spend a month hammering away at the thing (and besides, the better ideas I've had recently are being used elsewhere anyway). Nevertheless, I wanted to spend a month doing ( Read more... )

(Not sent by my workplace, I hasten to add - but sent to it by an organisation that will remain nameless to protect the guilty)

Dear Sir or Madam,

On the 17th of December the Romans celebrated Saturnalia. It was marked by high jinks and japes and reversal of social roles, in which slaves and masters switched places. It was a time to eat, drink, and ( Read more... )

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I can never overstate how much of an honour it is to be asked to write for When Saturday Comes magazine. On the surface, it might not seem like much - one football magazine among hundreds, still very much a fanzine in spirit, and with sales that, while admirable for the scale of the operation (and I've been to their offices, having interviewed for ( Read more... )

It always seemed slightly difficult to explain to people exactly how Rosemary fit in to our family. My mum's best friend, despite being some 30 years older. A member of the family - a close one, who spent every Christmas dinner with us, who we each saw or at least spoke to on a weekly basis - despite not actually being related to us by birth or law ( Read more... )

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I don't think I need to re-state how excited I was about seeing this one. And it may not be perfect, but it has a damned good try.

... That the film gets away with foregoing any sort of traditional three-act structure is a testament to the assured, exhilarating style that's long-since become Wright's trademark. Despite cramming in six fights ( Read more... )

(needlessly long post, this - it was going to be a quick point about what is hardly a major issue, but... well, I got rambling)

This week, I took delivery of a new PC - a Dell Studio 15, a replacement for the netbook I'd been using for just over a year, which was itself a stop-gap solution after my previous machine, a ThinkPad (the last in a long ( Read more... )

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