Happy New Year!

As it turns out, I will be working tomorrow. Apparently the manager got word of what Chloe and the others are planning to do, so he browbeated me into turning up "just in case". What he means, of course, is that I'll be there to provide till cover in case the girls are completely hung over tomorrow morning.

I don't mind, actually. I'll be doing my friends a favour in letting them off the hook, and it's not as if the garden centre is likely to be busy.

Writing-wise, very little is happening at the moment. I am still waiting for one of my Cold Witness crits to be returned, and I can't finish the book until I get that particular response back (I'm told there are inaccuracies in some technical details, plus radio and telephone protocols on military bases). So my last new year's resolution, to have Project Cold Witness finished by 31st December 2004, has not been fulfilled. It's interesting to think that, other than the trailing mess of Life of a Falcon, I have worked for longer on PCW than any other novel.

I have serious plans for 2005. I will get PCW finished and submitted within the next few months. I will start another novel and finish the first draft--at minimum--by this time next year. I also intend to get a few hundred miles of hiking experience (plus over thirty summits!) under my belt.

To be honest, I still don't know what I want to be working on next. Project Hooded Falcon sounds good in principle, but I am worried that the story won't matter enough. Recently I've become very much aware that novels which really have an impact are more worthwhile than ones which don't. Is the dodgy activities of a single group of scientists "big" enough? Why will it matter on an emotional level, for the characters?

In many ways, fantasy has a greater scope for "big" stories than semi-factual fiction. Perhaps this is why so many fantasy stories are based on circumstances which threaten not only individuals, but entire nations.

I have several worlds which I can develop into stories, and I'm adding detail to them all the time by drawing out maps and other worldbuilding miscellany. But can I commit myself to a novel based in these settings?

We shall see. Whatever the future holds, I want to write something that actually matters--something that engages the reader on a more intense emotional level.

Belated happy Christmas!

Christmas Day was fine, clear and bitterly--no snow, but deep frost. My brother got a new camera (a sparkly new digital SLR) and went into a photographic frenzy that morning, returning from his forest expedition with dozens of brain-meltingly good pictures.

I myself woke up to find a range of useful camping and hiking gear, all of which I will need in the future: a new Victorinox knife (with a saw!); a mini Maglite; a copy of A. Wainwright's Central Fells of Lakeland; and, best of all, the smallest spirit stove I have ever seen: the Trangia Mini, which weighs about four hundred grams and packs down small enough to be stowed in a fleece pocket. How did Santa know that I wanted those particular items? ;-)

Pretty much all I need now in the way of gear is a new pair of boots--my current ones have bald soles, badly cracked uppers, and leak in both water and sand. It's a testament to the quality of those old boots that, even after almost three years of severe punishment on a daily basis, I am very reluctant to let them go.

I was back at work yesterday. Jenni and Chloe both turned up an hour late, but to be honest they needn't have bothered. I don't think I've ever seen the garden centre so empty. As Jenni put it: "Isn't it great that we're being paid £9 per hour on double pay for standing around chatting to each other?"

I am not working on New Year's Day: I managed to wheedle my way into working Monday instead. The others have not been so fortunate. Chloe's camping with some friends in Rendlesham Forest on the night of the 31st (she's a kindred spirit, that girl), and was begging the boss to be given the Saturday off, since this particular camp will involve large amounts of alcohol. I can see her point. Most of the world will probably be hung over that morning. What's the point in coming to work when there won't be any customers?

I almost offered to pitch in and camp out there with them, but my sleeping bag is a lightweight summer model, and I rather think it will be pretty damn cold that night. Rather you than me, Chloe ...

Freedom! ... for five days, at least

Finished work yesterday with a feeling of great relief. The last-minute Christmas shoppers were surging through the tills thick and fast today, and as usual we were inundated with exchanges, refunds, nasty little quibbles and all manner of other problems. All the nasty customers seemed to gravitate towards Frances's till, which wasn't really fair, as her computer was having problems and this tended to delay the queue. I saw one man barge his way to the front of the till (just as we were putting up our Till Closed signs in preparation to go to lunch), slam his goods down on the counter, and bellow "You will serve me before you close the till, or by God I'll walk out of here and never come back!" Frances, intimidated by this neo-Neanderthal, backed down and rang his purchase through, which was more than he deserved. We went to lunch rather later than usual.

Both of us saw people we knew yesterday. My old form tutor came in to buy some odds and ends, and seemed puzzled to see me working at Wyevale instead of treading some snow-bound mountain traverse in the Lake District. Apparently I hadn't made my intentions clear: I have decided to wait until the spring before I attempt any peaks. The very thought of walking along some icy ridge in whirling snow and sub-zero conditions is ludicrous until I have at least some Lakeland walking experience. Extra embarrassment was to be had when the said form tutor's credit card refused to authorise.

Frances, on the other hand, saw the mum of an ex-boyfriend. They spoke very little. Afterwards, she told me that she'd been too embarrassed to say anything much. Apparently the "ex" part of ex-boyfriend is very firmly established.

With yesterday's work under my belt, I now have five days of holiday (including today) before I go back to work next Monday. It's unfair that I have to go in on the 27th, as that is the anniversary of the Rendlesham Forest UFO incident, and I had wanted to visit East Gate and the old crash site that evening, following the fire tracks from the base down to the field where the thing supposedly landed. I did it last year, while writing the first draft of Project Cold Witness, and the experience significantly shaped that part of the book. It would have been fun to do it this year also.

In any case, I intend to enjoy the next five days as much as possible, and relax from an extremely stressful three months at work. Hopefully things will have calmed down by the time I get back after Christmas.

Less than a week until Christmas!

The garden centre has now sold out of christmas trees. Despite this, someone approached my till yesterday and said "Will you be getting any more Christmas trees in after Christmas?" Holding back the obvious answer (ie. that the customer was a silly bugger), I said, in all sincerity, "I'll just go and check for you." Guess what?--the answer was a most definite "no".

I'd expected to be working more days next week, as the weekday regulars are all off on their holidays. The weekend staff (eg. Frances, Chloe, Jenni, Chris etc.) are all being press-ganged into working for pretty much the whole week. Since they're used to working Saturdays or Sundays only, the experience should be an interesting one. With me, however, I am apparently classed as a "weekday regular", as I work Tuesdays and Fridays as well as the weekends. They tried to give me Friday off! So surprised was I at the perverted logic of this (ie. that they ask me to work when I can't, but give me days off when I don't mind working), that I had agreed to working on Christmas Eve before I knew what I was doing. Yesterday I rectified that by suggesting that I work today instead of Friday, plus the usual Tuesday. Surprisingly, the supervisor (Dan, who's actually younger than me) agreed. If Steve Hilling had been there, slave-driver that he is, I expect I would have been working all week, right there alongside the others.

This is all for the best. I will now have a holiday stretching from Wednesday through to the next Monday. As an added plus point, Frances was in today, and will be back again on Tuesday, and having her around asking for help all the time makes me feel important. :-)

There's an interesting Christmas card situation at work. Somebody has put an old basket in the break room, and stacks of named envelopes mysteriously appear there every morning. I've already picked out four or five addressed to me. Inexplicably, most of them are signed by people I don't know (who the hell is "Mo", for example? Am I supposed to know you??) I will add my contribution tomorrow. Since I don't have the spare time to do cards for everyone I know, I am limiting it to just five: Frances, Chloe, Jenni, Emily, and Dan, the supervisor who seems to have at least some common sense ... and who, incidentally, has been known to make up excuses for people if they can't turn up on a particular day. I hope he will take the hint and be sympathetic if I decide to be "ill" sometime in the future.

Weekly pics: round 46

At least, I think it's round 46. Anyway, here they are: the last photos from our Wales holiday this August.

After the attempted conquest of Cadair Idris, we retreated back down the Dyffryn Dulas or Corris Valley. The first day on the road was a horrendous one. After days of glorious sunshine, we were struck by the good ol' Welsh weather in the form of constant, heavy, spirit-sapping drizzle. The clouds were down at about the thousand foot mark, obscuring the upper flanks of all the fells in the valley. Here's a picture of James sitting on his backpack, wet and depressed, as we strike camp. I think pretty much everything we owned at that point was soaking wet. James described his tent as being "aquatic".



Secondly, and finally, a photo from our last night, back at Brynmelyn. The sky had stopped pouring its miseries on us by that point (although our tents were still soaked from the inside out, and vice versa). Several mini thundersqualls were to be witnessed, however, chasing each other over the Mynydd Du hill/mountain massif at high speed. Here is one such storm breaking over the nearby hillock of Cefn Gader as it makes its way into the Dyfi valley.



Photos (C) Alex Roddie 2004

iBook is back!

Wow! Failed on Thursday, picked up on Friday, and returned on Tuesday: that's what I call excellent service. Not only did the Apple technicians fit a new logic board at no cost, they also polished the screen and gave the case a quick going-over with a cloth! I thought they'd sent me a new iBook at first, but a quick look at the cracked bottom right corner soon confirmed that it was mine.

The only data lost was my main password (an apparently random 10-digit sequence which is actually a garden centre barcode), and the date and time. Everything else was exactly as it was when I sent the computer away. Looking through the "recently used applications" menu, I saw that the technicians opened System Preferences and Apple System Profiler, as you'd expect ... but they also opened iTunes, and apparently had a rummage through my music library. Weird.

Anyway, this little interlude has turned out for the best. Working with pen and paper has given Project Hooded Falcon a surprisingly enthusiastic kick-start. I don't have any serious prewriting under my belt yet, but I have the ghost of a main theme, an idea of who the main characters will be, a rough plan for the beginning, and some details of the technology featuring in the book. For those of you familiar with Cold Witness, it may come as no surprise that this story will be based loosely around the technology which Major Wheatley helped pioneer: the programmable passive/active field psychotronic emitter. In plain English, that's basically a gadget which can control and manipulate people's senses and, to a certain degree, their minds--all through the highly precise emission of microwave radiation.

This time, instead of having the Ethereal Sword emitter hiding in a waterlogged bunker and playing havoc with people on the surface, the item has been installed on a stealth helicopter. A team of enterprising businessmen took over Orfordness after the 1980 incident, and upon finding the Ethereal Sword MK II in the bunker, developed it into a smaller, more accurate, more "useable" device. The current iteration (PT/WTLY-83, or Ethereal Sword MK IV) can be mounted on a remote-controlled helicopter and used to dupe witnesses into seeing it as a glowing red UFO.

I don't know where the characters will come into all this yet. Clearly, all I have at this point is a disembodied "idea" without any actual "story". But in my experience, most novels start out that way. I think this could be an interesting one to write.

So it begins

Work was manic over the weekend. With only two weeks left until Christmas, people are flooding into the garden centre and buying presents, decorations, Christmas trees ... especially Christmas trees. Dozens went through our tills yesterday. Stupidly, about half of them had no labels and hence no barcodes, because the labels tend to fall off as they go through the netting machine. Most of the Planteria staff were washing up in the restaurant (don't ask), which meant that there was nobody to go and fetch the labels from the tree section. Result: chaos.

As usual, I was doing most of the work: serving customers, answering the phone, helping Frances sort out problems with her till, calling supervisors to perform refunds and exchanges, trying to get new supplies of change and gift vouchers (both of which were in short supply), and running around looking for replacement odds and ends for grouchy customers. I tell you, that place would fall apart without me being there ... *mumbles*

Everyone is at high stress levels, as Paul (the guy in charge of stock) is in hospital with a bad knee. No-one knows what stock goes where, and the Goods In section looks like a bomb's hit it. Honestly, if a burglar broke in and pinched the lot nobody would know the difference.

Frances and I had several nasty customers, and a whole spectrum of people who don't seem to be able to read "TILL CLOSED" signs. She's been asked to work extra time over Christmas and is not too happy about it, but I've convinced her to consider Fridays, as it gets awfully lonely after five when everyone else has left. Chloe and Jenni have both asked to work as much overtime as possible.

As for me, I refuse to give up more than one of my days off per week. Any more than that and I would probably have a nervous breakdown.

(Endnote: This post sounds quite negative, but actually I enjoy working at the garden centre ... just not in large doses.)

So it begins

Work was manic over the weekend. With only two weeks left until Christmas, people are flooding into the garden centre and buying presents, decorations, Christmas trees ... especially Christmas trees. Dozens went through our tills yesterday. Stupidly, about half of them had no labels and hence no barcodes, because the labels tend to fall off as they go through the netting machine. Most of the Planteria staff were washing up in the restaurant (don't ask), which meant that there was nobody to go and fetch the labels from the tree section. Result: chaos.

As usual, I was doing most of the work: serving customers, answering the phone, helping Frances sort out problems with her till, calling supervisors to perform refunds and exchanges, trying to get new supplies of change and gift vouchers (both of which were in short supply), and running around looking for replacement odds and ends for grouchy customers. I tell you, that place would fall apart without me being there ... *mumbles*

Everyone is at high stress levels, as Paul (the guy in charge of stock) is in hospital with a bad knee. No-one knows what stock goes where, and the Goods In section looks like a bomb's hit it. Honestly, if a burglar broke in and pinched the lot nobody would know the difference.

Frances and I had several nasty customers, and a whole spectrum of people who don't seem to be able to read "TILL CLOSED" signs. She's been asked to work extra time over Christmas and is not too happy about it, but I've convinced her to consider Fridays, as it gets awfully lonely after five when everyone else has left. Chloe and Jenni have both asked to work as much overtime as possible.

As for me, I refuse to give up more than one of my days off per week. Any more than that and I would probably have a nervous breakdown.

(Endnote: This post sounds quite negative, but actually I enjoy working at the garden centre ... just not in large doses.)

Good news from all fronts

Sorry no pics this week, but the online photo index is stored on my iBook, and I wasn't able to recover it before the thing went kaput. Normal service will resume next week, all being well!

Anyway, the courier from Apple arrived yesterday afternoon (damned fast, seeing as they come from somewhere in murky Leicestershire), and he says that it should be returned some time within about a week. If so, this little episode will be little more than an annoyance--no data lost (with luck), and no damage done. I just hope the thing doesn't go wrong a third time.

Writing-wise, a few ideas are starting to percolate through the fog and drizzle of writer's block. A PCW sequel or related project seems the most promising at the moment, probably involving Christina Elmwood (my favourite character), Johnny Campbell (Christina's other half), and Major Pike (the outdoorsy Security officer). How about a plot connected with an artificial UFO? Take a small, silent helicopter, add a psychotronic emitter, and you have a stealth vessel capable of tricking people into thinking it's an alien spaceship (or, for that matter, most anything else it wants). Naturally the story would have to be largely set in East Anglia. I'm thinking of a private company having taken over the Cold Witness base, possibly using it to build and test their "Hooded Falcon" helicopter.

However, I like the idea of starting the book off in the Cumbrian Mountains. Say Major Pike is responding to reports of funny-looking lights in the Sprinkling Tarn area, and is staying at Dungeon Ghyll to keep an eye on things. Perhaps he bumps into Johnny and Christina on a backpacking trip. It's all very vague at the moment, but with a little coaxing, it just might bear fruit.

Lessons have been duly learned, though. If I'm going to write Project Hooded Falcon, I'll do so with a great deal more caution. Plunging head-over-heels into a project just isn't my style any more.

iBook up the creek again

As a Mac user, I consider myself extremely lucky in that I don't have to put up with all the problems Windows users have to brave on a near-daily basis (such as crashes, viruses and spam email). By and large, my Mac is an exceptional machine which has delivered flawless performance for thirteen months now.

However, my particular model of iBook suffers from a faulty video chip: Apple says it's a rare problem which will only crop up once. Trouble is, it renders your computer unusable since it blacks out your screen.

As you may recall, I sent my computer in for repairs to fix this very problem in late February. It was back on its feet again quickly, and I have had no further problems since.

Until now. Instead of the familiar grey loading screen, there is only ominous blackness after the startup chime. Reboots don't work. The thing's still starting (I can hear the hard disk whispering away), but to all intents and purposes it is a dead duck.

Bugger. I now have to use my brother's computer until I can get the iBook repaired. I just hope it's still covered by the warranty.

(Forgive me, folks, if I can't post as often as I'd like to for a couple of weeks. You haven't been forgotten!)

More grumbles

My work schedule has been shifted around. Instead of working Saturday to Tuesday, giving me three days off in a row, I am now working Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Tuesday. My days off are now fragmented into Monday (today--hurrah!), Wednesday and Thursday. Apparently they are desperate for staff on Friday, whereas Mondays are usually slow.

Would you believe that, this last Friday, the manager phoned me up at half past ten in the morning and asked me to work that day? The store opens at nine! Talk about late notice! I hope they don't call me up this morning and demand why I haven't shown up for work.

Writing is still going nowhere for the time being. I'm bouncing ideas around, but so far I've come up with nothing I feel excited about. I can wrap up Cold Witness once I get the last batch of crits for it, but until then nothing seems to be moving. *glum look*

All work and no mountaineering make Alex a dull dog

One of our major objectives for the Wales trip in August was to get to the top of Cadair Idris. We were turned back by bad weather. I know we weren't "defeated by the mountain", but it kind of feels like that ... and for the past few months, the desire to actually climb the thing has been gnawing away at my subconscious. I want to stand on the summit cairn and savour the view of the Irish Sea.

Now, I've figured that if I work three days overtime one week, I'll earn enough money to buy a return train ticket to Machynlleth, pay for the hefty taxi fee to take me to Dôl Einion from the station (and back again), and buy enough dehydrated rations for one full day. One full day in Wales is all I need to conquer the mountain. It'll be a super-cheap, super-quick backpacking trip--literally there one day, up the mountain the next, then back to England the following morning. My brother doesn't think it's worth the money. If you ask me, three extra days of work is a small price to pay. Cadair Idris is a very nice mountain.

Naturally this won't be possible until next spring (I don't want to lay out two hundred quid for ice axes and crampons right now), and it will have to be timed very carefully to get the right weather conditions, but I think it's doable. And as I'll be backpacking, the total cost of the trip will be very low: well under a hundred pounds. I earn more than that every week, even on minimum wages.

I look at it this way. Although going all the way to Wales to climb one mountain may sound somewhat reckless, I only have so much time on my hands. By next September, I'll be at university in Norwich ... and that's where I'll stay for three years. I have to seize whatever opportunities I can this year. It may be the last chance I get for a very long time.

New favourite quote

"There are no turtles anywhere"
--Ponder Stibbons, The Science of Discworld, by Terry Pratchett

(What do you mean, you haven't read it? Heretic!)

Weekly pics: round 43

These are the final two pictures of Cadair Idris that I'm going to show here--and the second to last picture set for the Wales holiday. After next week, I'll move onto something new.

Firstly, this is me sampling the local water at the shores of Llyn Cau, just before we turned back down the mountain. Water purification tablets were used, as there was a greenish tinge in parts of the lake ... and I suspect that quite a few people camp on its shores, so there is always the chance of refuse or waste ending up in the water.



Secondly, a stunning photo taken some way down the Nant Cadair (Llyn Cau's small, tumbling stream). The mountainside in the background is the sheer flank of Mynydd Moel. I recall that my brother got his feet rather wet taking this particular shot.



News

There's not much news, actually. I still have a cold, am snivelling and sneezing away pathetically, and am not looking forward to going to work tomorrow. Knowing my luck, I'll sneeze all over a customer.

There is some good news, though. I've "discovered" a new Lakeland hike, not far from Wasdale Head: The Mosedale Horseshore, a single traverse linking the summits of Red Pike, Scoat Fell, Steeple, Pillar and Looking Stead. It's a challenging high-level trek, but I've added it as Day Twelve in my plan for the May 2005 expedition. It'll be a good way to mentally and physically prepare myself for the Scafell Pike climb, which I'll be attempting two days later.

(Endnote: The stat counter now shows that the site has received over three thousand visits since March the 4th! Were you the 3000th visitor??)

Photos (C) James Roddie 2004

Possible ways forward

It is now the first of December. Now that I've decided for definite that NaNo isn't (or wasn't) for me this year, I can consider what comes next. I have a variety of choice. Continue ETF after a period of considered rest? Really push to get Cold Witness finished and submitted? Pick up one of my stories in "cold storage" and start prewriting in earnest?

There are good and bad points with all possibilities. Although I like Evil's True Form as a story, it isn't quite what I imagined it would be when I was prewriting. A significant part of this, I think, is the time of year: the book's set in high summer, but I'm writing it in winter. That has a real and profound impact on the story. I don't know whether this is true for other writers or not, but I've noticed that every single one of my books--except Project Cold Witness--has been written out of season. PCW was both set and written in winter. It is the one and only novel that I think, at this point, has a chance of going the full way.

Coincidence? Do you think it's significant that, whenever I write a winter book in summertime (or vice versa), it starts to falter? I will have to explore this idea.

I have a number of possibilities in "cold storage". One thing I've always wanted to do (and actually tried earlier this year) is a sequel to PCW. Project White Light was a good idea, but the main storyline was sort of overtaken by one of the subplots, and this fatally overbalanced the story. I now think that the subplot--the idea of advanced psychotronic research at the old Cold Witness facility--actually holds more merit. The trick is to develop a story which is both true to the spirit of the original book, and original in its own right. That's harder than it sounds.

Other possibilities include various fantasy ideas I've tried out. The Riven Path still languishes in cold storage, half-prewritten and waiting to be completed. I have another fantasy world, still at basic mapping stage, that I like the look of. Even if I don't develop these worlds into novels, worldbuilding and prewriting with no further end than the act itself is a kind of therapy for me. It's relaxing, stimulating, and fun.

So, I'll see how it goes. The pressure's off now I've accepted NaNo defeat. I can continue working at my own pace. In some ways, not completing my 50,000 words for November is liberating--it sets me free, able to start work on any project I want, or even start an entirely new one from scratch.

Other than further PCW rewrites, I am now writing for myself alone.