Who, Why, Where, When and What the?

Blimey...

I can't remember the last time I did just one blog in a month and that was the one I called a kind of contractual obligation blog. This one feels like a blog that needs to be written before it all gets forgotten about...

So in the style of ineptias et effercia ...

• Bale - traitorous Welsh scumbag. I don't deny anyone the right to improve themselves but the way he went about it was pathetic and so below him I kind of hope (in an evil and nasty way) that he does a 'Woodgate' while at Real Madrid. 
• Phone - bloody hell. I got my most recent mobile phone in 2008; mobile phone technology hasn't so much developed as left me behind. I now have a phone that doesn't look too dissimilar to one of those fangled iphone jobbies. Apparently it has x more memory and ting than the iphone my memory was basing it on. It does things that my first computer would have dreamt of doing and it scares the bejesus out of me...
• Borderline Press - there will be a News Blog at some point in the next couple of weeks (maybe even tomorrow). I just want to make sure the entries for that weren't like the entries for this blog a couple of years ago. Keep'em wanting more!
• Summer - finished Thursday.
• Shed roof - finished Thursday. But GET IN!!! I am notorious for being the shittest DIY person whoever lived with all the functioning limbs. I conquered a slight fear of heights, a roof made of filo pastry and honeycomb and various other hazards, obstacles and a blazing hot sun to recover the shed roof. That's correct, those of you with good memories for trite things will remember that recovering the shed roof was one of my BIG tasks for the summer... of 2012.
• Monitors - two of the buggers, giving me and extended screen. How do people only cope with one?

  

  This actually is what my desk top looks like sometimes...

• The funniest joke in the world - the punchline of which is Roy Orbison. However, there's more to it than that. Back in the 1980s, when I was best known for being that 'stoned guy', I had a friend (who sadly amounted to nothing) who I spent a lot of time with and got pissed and stoned with very often. One day, while or shortly after sampling some hashish or some such, I came up with (or it might have been him) the fuinniest joke in the world. It was so funny that we lost 22 minutes of our lives laughing so hard and so fiercely that a bystander might have thought we'd been repeatedly kicked in the testicles with white hot shoes on. We were collaborating at the time and I grabbed a sheet of paper, scribbled down the legend that some people think was 'Roy Orbison' and turned to the guy I was with and said, as I saw it slipping out of my grasp, "What was the start of that joke again?" He looked at me with that slightly confused expression he has retained and shook his head. He couldn't remember. I couldn't remember, but it was still there, I just needed something to bring the memory back. But what was worse was I turned to the guy I was with and said, "Roy Orbison," and it set us off laughing again for about another 5 minutes, by which time neither of us could remember what the actual joke was...
• IE - That's Internet Explorer, not the educational definition, and it did something the other day that caused me grief for almost the entire day and all because of something that shouldn't - couldn't - have happened... I wouldn't use IE if it was the last browser on the planet and the only alternative would to browse the web by sticking my head up Bella Emberg's arse. I hate it, it's shit. However, it is in my menu thingy and on Tuesday, when Neil was over developing me spreadsheets for Borderline that I would easily understand, he, unfamiliar with my PC and my new double dynamic monitor system, didn't notice that I already had Chrome open, went into the menu, found IE and opened it. I saw him and cried "Noooooooooooo," in that Homer mocking Charlton Heston way and told him to shut it down because it was evil. No shit, I said, "Shut it down, it's evil..." In a Wicked Witch of the West way and he did just that. Clicked it off and it shut down straight away. Except...
  Something happened; I don't know how and I've asked people in my frustration why this strange phenomena happened and they didn't know either. In fact the person who gave the solution - because it's happened before - doesn't really know how it happens (and when a developer says that you have to wonder a wee bit). Anyhow, it seems the opening and closing of IE inexplicably ticked the 'work offline' option in the menu; this then affected all my Microsoft products and anything that uses a Microsoft product. I was put 'offline' in the new equivalent of Outlook; it caused problems in Google Chrome; it was one simple thing that caused me no end of grief because I would never have considered IE was the culprit... I had to go back into IE, click to 'offline' button and shut it down again. All in all, a major headache and proving my point that it's evil.
• I have had a reasonable harvest this year; the most pleasing being actual red tomatoes (and yellow ones!). We had enough green beans for one dinner and the purple potatoes (skin only) were surprisingly versatile. We had some very ordinary white beetroot to go with the normal red stuff and we might get a pepper or a courgette before the end of September, weather permitting (but these weren't planned they just grew out of the compost).
• I have been reading nothing but comics in foreign languages; looking at pretty pictures; watching Breaking Bad (now on season 4); listening to whatever takes my fancy - today it has been Talk Talk and Jon Hopkins. My 'hard walking' regime has been set back by my hard breathing. 
• That's it. I will be back, I just don't know when...

Surely, If You Wallop Someone... Eugh.

I am more than aware that the once ubiquitous blogs have dwindled during a period of time when one would expect me to be at my most prolific – the summer; but, you know, starting up a publishing house tends to take its toll on your time and I’ve actually been doing so much I’ve barely had the time to sit down and write anything that resembles a blog. Doesn’t mean I haven’t been writing though… and, of course, that means at some point you’ll be exposed to some proper dodgy writing rather than the usual dodgy stuff.

The demands of starting a business aside, I’ve been trying to write and edit the Robotz story and my artist partner seems happy with the route I‘m going. I have never felt more alive than on deadlines – I realised this a few years ago when I gave myself a deadline to complete a task, it added a frisson of constraint.

I remember a number of occasions where the guy who replaced me as news editor at Comics International failed to deliver a page at the 13^th hour and I would, literally, knock one together in 15 minutes. Of course the downside of this was my boss was intelligent enough to realise that if I could knock up a perfectly adequate page design and fill it in less time than it took him to drink a cup of coffee, why on Earth was he paying us so much money (for, some would say, old rope)? If only starting this business was so easy…

Once, not so long ago, I would have devoted an entire blog over to the fact that I have now passed the one year point in my no smoking campaign. As an addict, I know that there can’t be any slip ups because I’m in a stressy period and I could easily succumb. However, the wife and I have been watching Breaking Bad for the last couple of weeks and this crystal meth stuff that Walter White manufactures looks far more interesting than other more legal drugs… J

I look a little like Walter at the moment – shaved head, heavy stubble, and when I was in the opticians last week sorting out my eyes, I put on a pair of frames that made me look just like Walt did when he first shaved his head. I’m sort of glad I flunked chemistry.

See? (If you’ll pardon the impending pun) I’ve been to the optician and that would normally have probably required a biographical illumination and probably a long descriptive passage about some fuckwit who I argued with. Instead, I was seen by a pretty little petite thing and a very amiable eye doctor. There was a woman there with level 3 COPD. This was the only thing I needed to see and hear to make me realise that I made a very sound decision stopping smoking. I haven’t got my new glasses yet because I want the wife to accompany me as the ones I‘m currently wearing she would not have let me buy had she had her way.

There is below this somewhere a photo just taken on the webcam of me sitting on the patio writing this with said glasses on. Here’s modern technology for you? Next there’ll be things like mobile phones and looms…

Actually taken over a week ago, that's how behind I am!
Oh and yes that is an old man's vest

Obviously the Moby look went out years ago. I got these glasses as a kind of homage to my dad who wore glasses that I didn’t think suited him… That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

I need new glasses because all of this close up work is giving me monster headaches – like the one brewing at this moment. But that might just be down to the fact that Fishwife can’t get out of his back door at the moment and is having to use the alley to take his dog up and down to the loo. Whenever he uses the alley, Lexy takes personal umbrage at this and causes merry hell. Seriously, if you saw this meek and mild dog behave when someone is in the back alley, you would deter burglars from even contemplating doing either house.

I could bang on about how you all need to discover the truth about welfare figures and don’t go believing everything the right wing press and UKP tells you. I could also recommend you go and read the Guardian’s excellent piece on whether or not fracking is environmentally dangerous – and it leaves you to make up your on mind. Or I could take photos of massive beetroot and show you how piss poor my potatoes look like they’re  going to be. But I won’t. I don't want to talk about football either, or cricket, or the weather (but hasn't the weather since May, on the whole, been a blessed relief?)

It's Mainly About Me

Here’s something you wouldn’t expect me to say – life is good.

I have days where I think my head is going to explode, but part of that is down to the fact that since Borderline Magazine finished I’ve largely lived my working life on autopilot and do you know, it made my brain stagnate. Because my focus was on sensible things and supporting people, the creative juices simply stopped flowing. For all my rhetoric about hating comics and all the surrounding stuff, I think that’s just me – never bloody happy with everything and vocal about it.

There are times, like sitting on the phone to the bank for 55 minutes on one of the hottest days of the year, when I get despondent and think all this legal and start up bullshit is doing my head in, but, you know, it’s just a bit of hassle and hopefully in the long run it will prove to be worthwhile. When some people tell me I’m mad or regale me with horror scenarios; or tell me that any comics publisher outside the top 4 loses more money than they make (then how are they still in business then?), my reaction is always the same. These companies are not me. These setbacks will be overcome by me. The hurdles will be jumped by me. The people at these rival publishers aren’t ME!

Just this once, it really is all about me.

So, I’m sitting here, on the patio, enjoying the rapidly clouding over last day of proper summer. The forecast for the next few weeks appears to the kind we’ve all gotten used to; cloud, rain and cooler temperatures. The heat wave hasn’t so much been burst as had a series of little pinpricks which have slowly allowed it to dissipate, by Monday, I reckon, it will be 20 degrees and at least I’ll be able to breathe again and return to my increasingly escalated fitness regime.

I’ve got Fuck Buttons blaring out in my headphones and there is much news that I have unbelievably neglected to mention…

The best wedding ever took place at Dodford Manor on Sunday 14^th when Neil and Jenny got married on a baking hot day. I cannot remember a wedding that was so enjoyable and that so many people were blown away by. That’s my wife’s creative brother for you and in many ways it brought back memories of his twin brother’s funeral (Glynn would have loved to have been at Dodford) because that was the best funeral I’ve ever been to, so I suppose there was some symmetry involved and as my key word at the moment is ‘symmetry’ it’s fitting.

I posted about 100 photos up on Facebook and we took over 650 in all. Wonderful food, fabulous music, great hosts, excellent guests, sexy women, hot sunshine, unexpected guests and smiles all round. Welcome to the family Jen, you made a good choice (but so did Neil)!

The other big news is the new neighbours who have moved into the Dead Man’s house. The first thing you immediately notice is they are young, and they have a kid and another on the way and that he has this big fuck off customised van and she has a car and they have lots of friends and suddenly with Fishwife, the Lithuanians and the Noisy Woman and various other new additions up and down the street it’s no longer a nice quiet suburban street inhabited by people who appreciate peace and tranquillity. For the first time since we’ve lived here the streets are full of the noises of kids and frankly I fucking hate it and the sooner we have enough money to move to Kirkcudbright the better.

As for ‘Yoot Bwoy’ and his pregnant missus, the jury is out. I did here him talking on the phone to one of his homies hence why he has initially been christened Yoot Bwoy, because despite being as white as my arse he has that slightly cockney Jamaican patois, the one us middle aged old twonks just love…

So to recap: on the left is Fuckwit and Fat Girl; on the right is Fishwife and Fat Lass; over the road are, to the right Mr Miserable, the Lithuanians, Yoot Bwoy, The Token Black Family and then Weird Bloke and the Stranger daughter. These are essentially the houses I see from my office window. There is the Incest family next to Fuckwit and CinderNelly (must tell you about her at some point) next to Fishwife and the Noisy Family next to CinderNelly. Fat Lass actually called her CinderNelly and it stuck; she thinks she’s a princess and she looks like Dumbo.

Time has come for a business meeting. I shall resume this, if there’s any great need, later…

… Turned into a day later, because that’s what my life is like at the moment!

The best thing about this is my pessimism is failing; even my forecast that summer would be over today is wrong – despite a forecast that said torrential rain, thunderstorms and cooler temperatures, I’m out here on the patio again, in my shorts, looking at a largely clear sky apart from some very high cloud; with a bit of luck the shit weather will head east and today will be fabulous! [That was written a few hours ago; we've just had some extremely pleasant thunderstorms, even if the dogs are wigged out.]

Heck, I’m even pretty ambivalent about the coming football season – although I’m sure that will change once Spurs lose to Palace and various other shit teams (sorry Tim).

This weekend has already seen news about Borderline Press start to permeate the great hide of internet comics fandom and I hope by the middle of next week to increase my already burgeoning workload – doing this work is great, I love it.

I always said I would never use Borderline as a vanity project, but sometimes an opportunity is just too good to turn down and that’s how I’ve ended up writing the story for a book I’m going to publish next year. It is a tale of sadness and hope in a future world where humanity’s legacy is being maintained by the unlikeliest of sources. The artwork is fully painted and the artist is the magnificent Joanna Karpowicz, who is celebrating her birthday as I write this!

Touching Cotton

I suppose the odd thing is that this time last year I was writing about 3 blogs a week and probably boring people rigid with pointless meanderings about life from my patio.

I don't appear to have the time for frivolity at the moment. Setting up a new publishing business is unbelievably hard work beset by days of anger, days of frustration, days of elation and just days where all I seem to do is just go over old ground all the time. Don't get me wrong; I'm loving every minute of this new venture, even the setbacks and the knock backs.

I haven't felt so alive for 10 years.

Things are also beginning to move along. I have one definite project; two which aren't finished yet but I have first refusal on; a project that I appear to have volunteered myself to write - a children's book (which I am very excited about - despite my obvious reservations about publishing myself and the stigma attached to that); and I've started negotiation with a couple of people about producing collections of their web comics. And I also have my stumpy mitts involved in another children's book, but that won't be ready until 2014. Plus I continue to rebuild links, repair napalmed bridges and reconnect with people that for a number of years I believed I'd never have anything to do with! The initial plan was to have two or three books out just before Christmas and that plan is still very much on schedule!

It appears that the government accidentally allowed their Direct.gov website to have the link for a bogus company... I was looking for some government grants, to help with the set up of the company and I was directed towards a company called Business Grants - http://www.ukgrants.org.uk/ - who eventually offered me some money for web development on the proviso I paid something up front. My team of scrutinisers all warned me that something was dodgy about this and subsequent investigation has led to me believing that this is a bogus company, despite assurances from one of their 'customers' that they were okay.

A search on their registered address showed nothing. There was no phone number. No trading address. No way for anyone to get in contact with them other than an email address. No FRN - a 6-digit number they should have if they are a registered company (my company has one, why don't they?). But more importantly, not a single email has been answered from them since Tuesday when my alarm bells started going off. The only thing I can find about this company on line is a thread on a notice board about them being a con. That was enough for me to feel disheartened but also realistic; did I really expect this current government to give anything to new businesses or have affiliates that weren't dodgy?

***

It appears the summer could come to a crashing halt by next weekend. I know there are some who think this is a great thing, but I have a certain amount of sadness about it. England - my bits, anyhow - has looked like a proper summer. The fields are a lovely golden colour - which is nice when you've just seen green and grey for the last seven years - the fields are full of wild flowers and grasses that are having, if you'll excuse the expression, a real field day of growth and the late spring has meant that this country looks as good as it has for years. It is a pleasure to walk the dogs and be out in this heat and sun.

But... By Tuesday we'll be seeing those fabled thunderstorms that often follow decent weather and by next Saturday the forecast is for about 20 degrees; about 10 degrees cooler than what we've been used to. That said, I might be sitting here in shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt at the moment, but its cloudy and cool out there at the moment and part of me think that even if we see ridiculous temperatures over the next couple of days (35 in London tomorrow apparently), I think we've seen the end of summer until perhaps September. I just can't help thinking that August is going to be a cool washout. I have been wrong about the weather already this year, so we shall see.

The irony is that if we get cooler, low pressure driven weather, I breathe so much easier and I even get to sleep!

Of course, it could just be wishful thinking that the weather for the next 6 weeks is going to be crap; but I don't want people thinking I'm being pernicious...

***

When I was at the Youth Offending Service, I worked with a lot of very knowledgeable people - one of them was even the social worker for one of the Jamie Bulger killers until he was 18. I learnt an awful lot and one of the things I became aware of was that people who put child pornography on the internet are a) going to get caught and b) idiots.

David Cameron's desire to prevent any paedophiles accessing illegal material and roping in Google, Yahoo, Bing and all the others seems, on the surface, to be admirable. Except, you can't find child porn on the internet. It's hidden, in news groups, usenet and private - access only - sites that are disguised to be as innocuous as possible. Child porn is not pornography; it is a wholly different beast in its distribution and the people purveying this sad filth are experts and a lot more expert than Cameron's self-appointed web gurus.

The cynic in me has seen torrent sites banned by my ISP because there is a fear that the 2% of the population who illegally download stuff will rob the world of vital finance (but these places spring up again two days later under a different website allowing those 2% to carry on regardless) and now the proposal to ban all pornography sites, which, of course, will result in them just moving themselves around. Look at Pirate Bay - every time Virgin or BT ban them, they pop up with a new site somewhere else; that gets banned and they pop up again. The one key factor here is that if you use Pirate Bay to download the torrents file you need and they have been blocked, a quick search on ... a search engine ... and you'll find a mirror site that hasn't been banned - ad infinitum. If you can't find a mirror, you'll find another torrents site, offering the same service (until they are shut down and someone else steps in). Have I said 'ad infinitum' already?

China has all kinds of problems monitoring the Internet. It is believed that for every 70 people they prevent from going to places the Chinese government don't want them near, 30 people have already found a way round it and are viewing things via a proxy server.

Could it be that Cameron is so desperate to impose bans and barriers on the Internet because more now than ever before anti-government rhetoric is rife on the net. As more and more people become hooked on the net, more and more are exposed to anti-government 'propaganda'. Hiding behind 'child pornography' as an excuse is almost cowardly.

Incidentally, if you want to stamp out child porn, shut down Usenet. Oh, it's a US creation and 70% of the users are from the USA. That isn't going to happen then...

***

It's Monday now. After a dull weekend, the sun is out, the temperature is rising and we're going to melt. Great innit?

Kick in the Teeth

I have a real moral dichotomy with Kickstarter. If you’re a musician without a record label, an amateur without a publishing contract or just a wannabe with some chutzpah, then if you can persuade people in this current climate to part with cash you deserve to get what you ask for and produce the thing you’re promising.

However, if you are independently wealthy and you view Kickstarter as a way to do something you are not confident about spending your own money on, then I start to have a serious problem. I actually find it morally reprehensible for a rich person to use Kickstarter, because, you know, you don’t fucking need to. I actually have a serious problem with anyone who has money resorting to this kind of ‘begging’ – it’s an insult to all the people who genuinely ‘need’ your money because they can’t afford to do it. You could argue that if they can’t afford it then they have no right to do it, but what’s the point of Kickstarter if it’s just going to be for people who would rather use your money than their own?

I first got pissed off about this new kind of funding stream when some US producer managed to, in my humble opinion, scam $2.5million to do a movie based on a failed TV show. I read in comments on blogs and Tumblr about this and kind of gave a silent cheer when people started suggesting that the $2.5m might have been better spent on charitable concerns, because you know, raising that kind of money to finance a film isn’t going to put food on the table of the poor. But that’s a different issue and nerds and geeks will justify their passion even if it means someone dies of starvation in a country that isn’t in Africa.

The thing that has tweaked my ire this time around is actually two things. The first is the fact I spent nearly an entire day putting together, filling in and ensuring the application for a grant to help my new business was faultless only to discover a week later that it had been rejected and a reason was not offered – the people who dish out new business grants don’t actually tell you why they’ve rejected your application, so you don’t know what to do ‘right’ next time you want to be rejected…

A friend suggested I go to Kickstarter and I looked at him like he’d just suggested shagging me or my wife. The logic behind my reasons for not thinking this was viable were clear – I’m setting up a limited company, I dread to think what the bullshit involved in getting independent funding for it from a thousand people might entail – it’s bloody hard enough at the moment without muddying the waters even more.

The other reason was one I didn’t go into. I had just read an interview with a famous writer who claimed that Kickstarter was the way forward; the way for things to be done, now and in the future – presumably with no threat to his own bank balance? This is where I have a massive problem; a friend said he saw a project by Zack Braff on there; you know the guy, he was in Scrubs for years, makes indie films and I’m thinking probably is quite independently wealthy… So why is he wanting to gamble with your money? And more importantly, why are people allowing him to gamble with their money when he clearly has enough of his own?

I know a musician whose Kickstarter was a success and it allowed him to record his first album in years; 1000+ fans were delirious and it helped fund some tours and the chance of another new album in the coming year or so. This guy hadn’t been near a label in years and the best he could do was probably some bedroom tapes sent to a small but select mailing list – suddenly the 1980s has been reinvented… But the point is I believe that if 1000+ people paid for his new album, got it and everyone was happy then fine, they have something for their investment even if it could have been an album of him farting into a goat’s mouth. Would he have released that album without Kickstarter? Probably not. Could Zack Braff do his project without Kickstarter? Probably with the small change in his wallet.

I’m not suggesting Kickstarter should prevent wealthy people from making the same appeals as amateurs or poor people, but I do sort of think there should be a disclaimer that says, “You are aware that this is an independently wealthy individual asking for you to take the risk on his idea rather than him use any of his extensive wealth!?” Then if people want to invest in it, then they deserve everything they might get.

***

Summer has been going strong for nearly two weeks now and the forecast suggests that it could last at least two more weeks. I said not so long ago that this year reminds me of 1975, the year people forget because they were either not born or 1976 is far more prominent. 1975 was a late, long hot summer. If we’re following those kind of patterns, then 2014 is going to molten.

The irony is that for most of the last fortnight I have struggled to breathe very well; it’s in weather like this that COPD really plays its hand and despite having wonderful weather when we were in Scotland last year, it was much easier to breathe because we were by the coast. This has made us change our long term plans again…

Our dream when we were in our 30s was to go and live in the West Highlands; but during our 40s we decided that this was impractical as a retirement idea, especially with Mr Healthy here. Dorset became the new favourite, but then we saw how many snobs lived there so we scrubbed that idea. After spending a glorious week in Wigtown last August, we’ve changed to moving to the south west of Scotland and probably not after we retire! If my business takes off, it doesn’t matter where I am as long as I have space and broadband, so it like doesn’t matter where I am…

I’m sitting here writing this on the patio; the temperature is already 30 degrees and it’s not 11.30 yet. I’m sweating like a rancid clunge and we have a weekend full of stuff, the centrepiece of which is the wife’s brother Neil and his wedding to the lovely Jenny. Those of you who have known us for years will probably be amazed that Neil is getting married, what with him only being 7, but of course he’s only been 7 in my eyes; he’s even younger in the wife’s! He is now 37 and the weather forecast is perfect for what we hope will be as auspicious as day as the one I had on September 13th 1986.

Effercio et Ineptias

·         There might be podcasts…
·         Listening to Triple S on the headphones; it’s wonderful Teutonic ambient wibbling about Antarctica and is absolutely perfect as background music.
·         I am reading nothing at the moment; I have been listening to Salem’s Lot on this here netbook as an audiobook.
·         We’ve had strawberries, raspberries and rhubarb so far this summer. We had four redcurrants and we’ll have a lot of blackcurrants. The spuds look patchy. The tomatoes are better than I have ever seen then, as are the beetroots. We have four strange things growing among said beetroots – they look like spinach, taste a bit like spinach but are developing large white bulbs – like white beetroot – at the bases. It’s generating a lot of fun speculation and I want to eat one!
·         I’ve just about given up on television…

A New Book Review

NOS 4R2
by Joe Hill

I struggled with this book at first; it seemed... bitty. It jerked around a lot; there was a lot being told and it had a quality about it that suggested the writer was born into the MTV generation - which, indeed, he was. It was also different than his previous novels (which one hopes will be the case), but it was different in that I struggled to continue reading it for a while because it made me feel uncomfortable.

It is a book that parents should avoid, because it plays on just about every fear a parent has and doesn't offer one shred of redemption from those fears. You read it almost knowing that there isn't going to be a happy ending; that this is Joe Hill's Pet Semetary, the book so many people love that was written by his father and offers nothing but death, despair and cold relentless end. NOS 4R2 does that almost from the first word; it's harsh, uncompromising and very, very unlike his father's books, despite being a horror novel.

Stephen King doesn't write books like this; books with a world view; books that contain real characters that are shown unreal things and simply cannot comprehend them. In King's novels, the weird happens and people, kind of, accept it. Even something as 'worldly' as Under the Dome it was about the people coping rather than the reaction from the other side of the barrier; this book plunges the real world into an impossible situation and it's what makes the book shine so brightly.

I have just finished NOS 4R2 and I still can't shake the feeling that there are probably thousands of holes in it; also that I shouldn't care about characters who have not been created the way his dad creates characters; these are no rich tapestries of humanity, Hill tells us what we need to know, the rest is unimportant (and I liked that too).

I will give no spoilers except to say that at the end the tears were in my eyes. Also, it does something really clever, so clever you will laugh despite it not being a funny thing. It also allows the 'real world' to accept that 'something' happened but to carry on regardless, which is why at some point, at the end, you know the book has to finish, because the epilogue would open a beer barrel full of worms (and probably worms with teeth) and I'm not sure how anyone in reality would deal with the unreality of it all.

It is a really creepy, scary and almost slapstick book. The villains are both very, very nasty and yet behave at times like the Chuckle Brothers doing Burke & Hare. The main protagonists are all really likeable and it all fits together really well and at the end you look at the book and wonder why his dad couldn't write something so good. Don't get me wrong, there are Stephen King books that piss on this from a great height, but there hasn't been a King book since (imho) Insomnia that is as good as this (albeit for different reasons).

You know when a critic calls a book 'a roller coaster of a ride'? Well, this is. A quite brilliant book, with a superb and spectacular denouement and a simply perfect ending.

9½ out of 10

Time Sensitive

Phil's theory of time isn't new. It's something I have used to explain the passage of time to make myself feel happier about the fact that most of the people I've grown up with, if they're not dead yet, look like they are going to be on first name basis with it in the next 20 years.

Space is another. Being a sensitive soul, when I was younger - very young - I used to work myself up into a right tizz because ... the universe never ends. It has essentially always been there and it always will be. Wrong, you say, but I'm talking existentialism here. When you're 8 and someone tells you that it doesn't matter how fast you travel and for as long as you like you will never ever come to the edge of the universe and if, somehow, you did there would be nothing on the other side; it was the 'nothing on the other side' bit that fucked me up. Being told that the universe sits in a huge sea of nothing works on a basic level until you realise that nothing is... um... nothing. Proper nothing is nothing at all - no air, no dust, no Justin Beiber, no... space or time - nothing, nought, nout, bugger all.

Now, you can look in the fridge and there's nothing in there, but there is, even if you don't want to eat mould, stale air, that thing at the back that you were sure didn't have legs and fur when you bought it. Space time nothing is something that can have you thinking your brain into twists, knots and aneurysms and because I'm just a wee bit special, it bugged the life out of me for years. Then someone said, 'Imagine this' and I did and everything was okay again ...

You get to the edge of the universe; it's still expanding at a rate of knots, but you have a super-duper goes-faster-than-the-universe-is-expanding 'vehicle'. You step outside the universe and on the other side is just nothing. a bit, for argument's sake, white nothingness. You get into your goes-faster-than-the-universe-is-expanding 'vehicle' and move away from the universe at the fastest speed you can go for 1 million years (you don't age in this goes-faster-than-the-universe-is-expanding 'vehicle') and then you stop, get out of the goes-faster-than-the-universe-is-expanding 'vehicle' and walk back one step and you are back into the universe. One step!?! You've travelled at a billion miles an hour for 1 million years and the universe is just behind you - like some cheesy pantomime villain? What the...?

But you see outside of the universe is nothing, so you can't really go anywhere in a nothing that is both the biggest and the smallest entity never to have existed.

Time isn't at all like that even if time and space kind of gave this symmetry in that you probably could have one without the other - in that nothingness more like - but it would play havoc with our sense of perspective.

The thing is we take space for granted and therefore we take time as well and the two are immutably linked. If you drive the same route every day for 10 years; the journey you take on the 10th anniversary is the same as the journey you took the very first time; except in your head it takes much less time even if the journey time is always 27 minutes. You become so familiar with the 27 minutes that it takes less time - in your mind's eye - than it does, even if it doesn't. See?

A ten year old will be told she can have something next year and to her next year is like forever. In reality next year is a 10th of her life. If I'm told I'll have to wait until next year it's like a 50th of my life - basic maths at work here - a tenth is bigger than a 50th and add in the extra existentialism and wow, a ten year old's perception of a year is the kind of thing a 50 year old would sell their soul for.

Monotony is a time dragger. I'm guessing the summer of 1976 seemed like it went on forever not because I was only 14 (and therefore experiencing just a 14th of my life), but because the weather from May through to the end of September (except for August Bank Holiday where it tipped it down for three torrential days) was the same, every day. You woke up, the sky was blue, the sun was out, the temperature rose steadily and it didn't change. Some days the high pressure area over us brought bits of cloud and slightly cooler temperatures, but in general it was monotonous (not that I'm complaining; give me some of that weather-specific monotony now, baby!) and the reason us Brits think time flies is because of the temperate climate and ever changing weather patterns. I'm thinking if you were born in Dubai you probably think 80 years is more like 280 (but, equally, the human brain probably speeds up monotony when you live in a place that rarely changes).

This is all theory, but it stops me from going completely bat-shit or trying to build a goes-faster-than-the-universe-is-expanding 'vehicle' to prove my point.

The fact that the equinox is behind us already is a scary thought. When I was a child days seemed to last as long as years (it's that perception thing again) and I regularly did three and four things in a day and had bus fair for a bag of chips (or something like that). Today, I sit here for an undefined amount of time and suddenly it's next week and I'm thinking - 'my life is made up of emptying the dishwasher' because I seem to do it more than once a day, although I KNOW I only empty it once a day.

Moving on...

I've always been a bit of a twat. And while my latest 'kick' has nothing twattish about it in the slightest, I sort of feel like I should be hit with a huge twat stick until I cry.

I have this COPD thing, which, I explain to people is a bit like angina in that it's there and it shouldn't bother me as long as I look after myself. I have my new inhaler, my lack of cigarettes and this new thing... this alien fuckwittery that doesn't sit well with me from a past perspective.

My pulmonary system is buggered. It isn't fucked, but it has been irreversibly damaged; as a result I will suffer from chest ailments for the rest of my life and I have a 90% certainty that I will eventually suffocate to death, like my mother did...

Two of the dogs are overweight. Marley because she eats everything and Lexy because the winter and cold spring lasted so long none of the dogs did the amount of exercise they really needed; there was no swimming and I kind of think because we trudged them out, wrapped up like Eskimos, feeling cold and monotonous (because it lasted so long), they didn't get the amount of energy burn to keep them trim, because we lacked the urgency they needed to run around a lot. Subsequently, dog biscuit has been reduced and a harder, more determined exercise regime has been put into place. The dogs need to lose weight or it will shorten their lives. That bothers me more than my own life span, because, you know, the dogs are my kids.

So getting Marley to run around isn't difficult; she does it a lot, she just mixes it with eating ANYTHING she can put in her mouth. So, she has her muzzle on now. She doesn't like it and if people tell you dogs don't sulk, it's just our interpretation, you have my permission to call them retards. Dogs sulk like teenage girls who have been grounded and had their phones confiscated.

Lexy is just lazy. Lexy would like you to get her a Tesco trolley and push her around, or better still, leave her on a bench in a pub and take the others for a walk. Energy expulsion is reserved for barking at Fishwife when he goes into his back garden.

The need for them to burn off all this fat supersedes everything, even my health. So dog walks have increased in time and distance. I plan my routes via Google Maps and have to push myself as hard as the dogs because I'm suddenly giving myself hills and rough tracks to walk. At first it was all a bit of a nightmare and I found that for three days after I'd have that 'yawning' feeling, like I wasn't getting anywhere near as much oxygen into my body. Then at the start of this week - three weeks into this new 'walk until you think you've done enough and then walk for another 15 minutes' mindset, something really odd happened.

I started to feel good...

That's a lie. I didn't feel good. I'd be hunched over at the top of a hill I'd just pushed myself up and I'd be breathing like a woman who had just had the most explosive orgasm ever after the most dirty and energetic sex she could ever imagine.

Yet... A year ago, I would have taken 20 minutes to even be in a position to move again. Now, despite the lungs, I'm walking again within 3 minutes and I'm pushing myself to walk again. I don't procrastinate when I'm walking. It's about covering the distance and making sure that Lexy keeps up with me (because Marley is always ahead of me). I'm pacing myself; breathing properly while walking (and avoiding talking) and I can feel my body loving every minute of it to the point where I look forward to my next walk.

My body isn't loving it at all; at least it isn't in my head; but my legs have stopped aching; the burn I get from lactic acid in my thighs is disappearing. I'm never going to run a marathon (although I might power walk one) or even 400 metres without possibly doing some serious internal damage, but I think I'm fitter now than I have been for 30 years. Someone said the other day that one thing is sure, exercise is a good thing and the more I do the better I get. I might never be able to get my lungs back to how they were, but I'm hopeful that I can make my life a damned sight easier than it might have been. You see, I expect being in my late 60s with an oxygen tube stuffed up my nose and the need to travel around with one of those horrendous motorised scooter abominations is going to be so dull, so laborious, so time-draggingly tedious that my wish for time to slow down will probably only be realised when I have no control over it. So, lets work that body really fucking hard and have a heart attack at 80 doing the Waendal Walk or the Pennine Way. That would be a worthy death considering the damage I've inflicted on myself for the last 35 years (and it would shock a few people: Phil Hall died where? Doing what? You're shitting me?).

I have all the time in the world to get fit, it's just going to seem like it whizzes past.

Effercio et Ineptias

• This week has been busy busy busy. I have had to juggle accountant's meetings, with phonecalls to people, spending some time with my old best mate Graham, and meeting up with my ex-assistant manager at the shop. As a result, I've missed things (sorry Phil); not got things I need to get done and despite working harder than I have for months, I've still managed not to do everything I wanted to.
• I have come to the conclusion that if one specific thing will eventually drive (hah) me out of the country, it won't be the Tories, the lack of opportunities or the fuckwits I share the country with, it'll be because of drivers (now you know why I said 'Hah'!) and the fact that people no longer seem to realise that they are driving the equivalent of a loaded hand gun. I was on the receiving end of a road rage person yesterday and all I think I did was approach him a wee bit fast. He was pootling up the Welly Road doing about 20mph and I was doing about 40, the speed limit for that stretch. I slowed down, but he was giving me all kinds of grief in his rear view mirror (to the point where I thought I might have someone dead stuck to the front of my car). When I eventually overtook him, he drove from the outskirts of Northampton to Earl's Barton between 20 and 40mph depending on whether or not I could overtake him, he sat behind me and continued to give me all kinds of grief through the medium of hand gestures. When I finally had enough, stopped the car to get out and confront this twat, he pulled out and drove off, honking his horn at me and calling me a wanker. Obviously I missed something... A memo perhaps?
• My playlist this week has been: Jon Hopkins, GIAA, Sigur Ros and, um... Oh yeah, I wee bit of Tears for Fears. I maybe need to vary it a little.
• I'm still reading Joe Hill's NOS 4R2 and I am really enjoying it, sort of. I really enjoy it when I read it, I just can take it or leave it at the moment. I seem to be reading it in blocks and forgetting about it for days until I remind myself I'm halfway through a book.
• I have given up on so many TV programmes now that I think I need to carry on watching the few that I do or I might as well just give my TV away. However, after watching the 2nd episode of the latest season of True Blood last night, I really think I should stop watching this kind of thing because frankly I could write it better if I was pissed and suffering from a serious head wound.  I cannot believe HBO produce this unbelievable heap of steaming cow excrement. They must pay the actors lots of money because I'd need to be paid lots of money to speak some of the dialogue uttered in this example of how fantasy TV should never ever be made. The shame is that somewhere in there is a promising story that has just been hidden behind soft porn, bad dialogue and some of the most unbelievably bad ideas ever wheeled out in any TV show. It needs to be stopped and sooner rather than later.
• There's probably more, I can't be arsed though. I think I shall go and sponge alcohol from friends now...