Naquada

So back in November I took part in NanoWriMo, which is basically an exercise in writing 50,000 words in a 30 days, it sounded like fun, and I thought it would be a good way of generating more ideas and content for that book apparently we all have inside us..

I’ve written on and off for years, a short idea of snippet here and there, and actually having a book published is something I’ve always wanted to do. Nanowrimo was actually very useful. I completed the 50,000 words, although it was mainly just random ideas and thinking, plots, and thoughts, enough to at least start working from, a few people have read snippets of some of the more formulated stuff, and so I thought I’d put one snippet up and see if anything came back:

History had one major disadvantage, it was old. Not that old wasn’t good, it was more the fact that being old, things aren’t quite so clear. It’s like your granny who gets to that certain age when things aren’t quite recalled as clearly as they once were. Its those moments when she tends to forget who you are, why you’re coming to see her, and why you seem bothered that a total stranger cannot remember your name, after all, what are you expecting her to be, some sort of mind reader? Turning up at the home of an old lady and expecting her to guess your name like you were her son or something. History is, the slam of the door of a lady that quite clearly doesn’t know you, and better still doesn’t want you on her doorstep playing some guessing game of ‘what’s my name grandma’ like she was some turn of the century mind reading act from the west end. History, quite often forgot, got a bit confused and wet itself in it’s old age.. This is how New Ears Day came about..

Somewhere though history, the exact reason why people donned large comedy plastic ears and ran around shouting ‘Happy New Ears’ on the first day of the first month has been lost, or, if not lost, slightly misplaced. It was the ministry that ensured that nothing ever was lost, or if it was, it was replaced by something just as good, if not better that took your mind off the fact that you’d just lost something important because you suddenly had something much more exciting, supplied by the ministry of unlost items. In fact he had once misplaced a rather grubby, well, he forgot exactly what was grubby and misplaced, as upon a ministry visit, he found his shiny new sugar spoon (minus the bowl), which, he was sure was the item that he’d misplaced in the first place. At some point the exact reason of whatever the thing was that was to be done on the first day of the first month had been replaced with something better by the ministry of unlost items, possibly due to people losing interest in the original event, of course the utter strangeness of plastic ears didn’t matter to the ministry, since it was a tick in the box, of ‘item found/replaced/customer didn’t notice the loss’ on the annual audit.

The brief I set myself for NanoWriMo was “Things are a miss with the world, quite literally, the odd woolen sock isn’t just getting lost in the wash any more, whole flocks of sheep are going AWOL.. Where all the stuff going? Why does a hypnotic cat look rather sheepish and who misplaced sanity..?” Of course reserving the right to completely change that at any point depending on humor content and potential writing abilities!!

A few people have likened the stuff I’ve written so far to a number of other authors (which I’m assuming is a good thing!), and I know reading some of their work has rubbed off a little bit during my life! So the question is where next, I have a few chapters ‘written’ although still in quite a random state, the story is still morphing and developing, and the Sugar Bowl, and the hypnotic cat are very important…

..I’d be interested in your thoughts…

I often sit back and use off the wall things to work out whats happening, and to get ideas.. I’ve not really written here for some time, and I miss being able to record my thoughts and ideas.. I had a play with Wordle over lunch today to look at what I have talked about here.. and see if that gave me any ideas on where to go with what I’ll write in 2010..

In 2009, so much happened.. I’ll probably add a new post on that at some point and do some general catching up.. but looking at the wordle above for my site.. I guess its pointing towards writing!!

Tomorrow NaNoWriMo starts, that’s national novel writing month for those not used to acronyms. I have always wanted to write a novel, or at least some sort of book, and I though taking parting NaNoWriMo might at least kick start some ideas if nothing else. It’s ironic I guess that I’ll be spending evenings and weekend writing, given that I’ve failed to write here as much as I used to.. maybe it will kick start that as well!!

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1 and the goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

so if nothing else… I hope to generate some ideas for “that book thats in all of us”.. if you want to follow my progress.. you can watch at my NaNoWriMo page

So last night was Halloween, because we’ve only just got back from Honeymoon we gave the normal Halloween Party at Clearwell caves a miss this year.

Instead we did a family party, I couldn’t get any contact lenses in time so I dug out the make-up for the old man again (I did this for a 80’s party as well a while back).

The make-up this time took a lot less time, given that I’d done it before, but I did add some beard material, which rather than a single stick on beard, was in fact, individual fibres of grey hair, all loveingly stuck onto my face by hand.

Michelle also dug out her costume from last years halloween party, they completely covered up our tans from the honeymoon, and quite a few of our relatives didn’t recognise me, but it was good fun.

With only a few days now until we get married, it was wonderful to get invited on a river dinner cruise by friends.

We cruised up the Thames at Reading for a few hours, enjoying a fantastic meal and drinks with friends.

The boat only takes approximately 12-15, so our small group had it exclusively.

After dinner we stood up on deck listening to music as we cruised down the river..

The ‘Candlelight‘ is a lovely boat, and something we’d definitely look at doing again, and is also extremely cheap when you have a number of people going.. They also do a curry dinner cruise!!!

It was also nice to see friends just before the big day…

Again all photos on my flickr set..

Well we’ve been very very busy with the wedding and stuff and its amazing that we only now have about 9 days left.. so the titme of this article in today’s Reading Chronicle seems very fitting!!

We are featured in an article about Spice the society and activities group…

For the non keen of eye… that’s me and Michelle in the bottom left of the article.. It’s a fantastic group, and whatever it is you want to do.. from the simple to and just plain out of this world crazy.. They’ll probably do it…

The best events for us have been the weekends away.. The Halloween Ball at Clearwell Caves, or Invading Center Parcs.. If you do a search on the blog you’ll find my previous posts about these.. But their list of events cover everything from walks, special access to Stonehenge, Tank driving, sports, dinners, helicopter training, you name it.. they probably do it.. They also run the club UK wide.. so even if your not in the Thames Valley and Solent area, and you want to get a life… they can point you in the right direction..

You can click here for a full size image of the article..

Yesterday was Marvellous 2008 down at Wellington Country Park.

Despite the forecast of rain.. the day was scorchingly hot and sunny.

Playing the tribute list were Bob Marley, The Gee Bees, T-Rex, Abba and Earth, Wind, and Fire.

We always love marvellous, its a great day out, and we get to spend the day with friends, drink wine and eat.. and you can’t get much better than that really!!!

It seems like not that long ago that I was rushing back from London to get to Marvellous 2007 , how time flies!!!

I took a few photos.. and ‘edited’ some as well…

We had a slight hang over this morning..

It’s been an absolutely mad few weeks, hence having quite a few posts queued up to go..

In the last few weeks we’ve be up to Scotland for a break..

We managed to get a small cabin on the shore of Loch Awe near Dalmally about 2 hours north of Glasgow and about 45 minutes from the nearest bit of civilisation, a small village shop.

It was a fantastic week, even with the midges, and please if anyone says ‘mind the midges’ if you go to the western side of Scotland, don’t think they are joking.. The place is full of them.. Not rain, shine, wind or flame thrower will send them packing!

We did spend a lot of our time in the lodge as the weather wasn’t wonderful, but it was a good time to get on with some magic books, kick back, and relax.

We did wander out to Loch Ness about another 2 hours north. The scenery on the way up was just breath takingly dynamic. It was, between the rain, a great chance for photos, especially some good sky and cloud shots at Loch Ness.

Loch ness itself I guess needs no introduction, except we saw no monsters, no midges either strangley. Loch ness itself I knew was big, however I didn’t quite realise exactly how big.. If Loch Ness was emptied, it would cover the UK in 6 inches of water from end to end, there is also not enough water in the uk to refill it..

The last day we spent in Glasgow and I took the opportunity to visit Tam Shepards magic shop on Queen Street, owned by the legendary Roy Walton, we had a great chat, and he was kind enough to sign two copies of the complete Walton (volumes one an two)

We returned home to our ‘under construction’ bathroom and a comfy bed..

I’m a massive fan of Cirque Du Soleil, and have been to a number of the shows that have run at the Royal Albert Hall, and Battersea, in the big top.

We had the opportunity to get tickets for Delirium at The O2 for last night, so we jumped at the chance, especially as this was the retirement of the two year run of Cirques first Arena based show.

I’d read a few things about the show before heading up to London, and understood that it was ‘different’ to Cirques normal performances.

We had drinks and food at Raan at the O2, which was really fabulous, and then we managed to head into the O2 VIP lounge. The lounge was great, with only a few people in there, no queues, it’s own bar, comfy chairs and room to breathe, we left the queues behind and enjoyed some pre-show drinks before heading up in the private lift to the 4th floor.

The O2 is a 20,000 seater arena, and the setup for the show divided the space basically in half. giving around a 10,000 seat performance. A pretty huge number for anything except a concert.

Delirium is Cirques first foray into the Arena performance space, and to be honest, it’s got it’s draw backs. The show is, if you sat in the right place, a spectacular show of music, light, projection, multi-media and performance. However from the wrong seats, you’re watching something that could become confusing, long, disjointed and a disappointment.

The stage incorporates 540 feet of projection surfaces, the equivalent of four IMAX screens, allowing massive multimedia videos to be projected onto the screens. The main stage also incorporates a massive semi transparent fly-screen that can slide across the stage to allow projections to be show in front of the performers on stage. This allows some very impressive hologram type effects to be shown on the stage. The visual experience of seeing a 120 foot high woman interacting with the performers on stage is or could be quite breathtaking. I also enjoyed the section at the beginning with the 120 odd foot tall doors that opened and closed with similar sized faces peering out into the audience.

I say, could be quite breathtaking, because I feel that Cirque really failed to make the show what it could be. Yes the show is clever, and large scale, but to be honest I think The O2 was too big for the show. In other cities, the custom stage is viewed from both sides, with the audience sat behind, and in front of the flat stage, pulling them to a more central viewpoint, and creating more of a connection with the performance. With the O2 performance, the audience (all 10,000 of them) were seating in front of the stage only. With a stage that is also quite narrow (for the audience size) it means that a lot of the angles don’t work, particularly some of the fly-screen projections that interact with the performers.

Cirque shows are normally a perfectly balanced mixture of music, singing, acrobatics and on stage performance. Delirium concentrates more on the music, containing music, and remixed music from the last 20 years of Cirque shows, many with an additional vocal section laid over the top. This is the closest you’ll probably get to a Cirque Du Soleil rock concert. However the issue is that Cirque isn’t a rock band, it’s not a super group, and it doesn’t pull off the job of trying to be one.

We were very disappointed that a lot of the performance time, two hours with no interval, contained few acrobatic or circus performers compared to other shows, for a 10,000 one performer with a red balance ball doing contact juggling is really not great. The only exceptions were the hula hoop girl, who was both visually excellent, and dynamic enough to hold your attention, and the balance acts half way through.

The rest of the show was slightly confusing, the large screens showing a mixture of multimedia and realtime feeds from stage, and almost hypnotic visual effects, meaning that at times, the biggest thing in your eye line, the 560 foot screens, became the center of attention, and not the on stage performance. I regularly was distracted by audience members getting up and walking round, and drifted from watching to listening, not sure if I was there for the music, or the visuals.

Personally I think any of the existing cirque shows could have worked well in an arena, possibly with a smaller audience, but the new style arena show wasn’t my cup of tea. Don’t get me wrong, the show visually was stunning, if you were central to the stage, but it lacked the normal Cirque feel and ambiance.

Maybe it was good that the show retired last night, for me Quidam at the Albert hall next year will be much more of the true Cirque experience for us..

As well as the huge number of other things we’re currently juggling, this weekend was the big walk. The Hangers Way, a 21-mile long-distance walking route through Hampshire.

The route begins at Alton Railway Station, out into the lush Hampshire countryside, along a series of steep-sided wooded hills, known as “The Hangers”, through the pretty market town of Petersfield to finish at Queen Elizabeth Country Park.

The walk’s divided into eight sections, each around an hour to an hour and a half, providing a really good day out if you chose to do just one section in a day. The route also passes through the famous village of Selborne, once home to Gilbert White, the 18th century naturalist and author of “The Natural History of Selborne”.

The Hangers are probably the richest woodlands on English chalk. Here the chalk that covers the central and northern parts of Hampshire abruptly ends in a scarp slope giving way to farmland.

Our plan was to walk from Alton down to Hawkley on the Saturday, and then from Hawkley onto Queen Elizabeth Country Park on the Sunday, stopping off at The Hawkley Inn over night on the Saturday.

We started off at about 11am from Alton having played car shuffle to get transport back in the right locations, and made pretty good progress. Most of the walk was fairly easy, but started to become harder work as we headed into the woods and hangers.

The main problem was mud, lots of it. The uphill sections were made particularly difficult with thick, sticky mud along most of the path. As anyone who’s walked in thick mud will tell you, this makes an uphill walk twice as tough.

Even though I’d gone out and got brand new waterproofs to replace my old ones, there was very little rain on route, and we made good enough progress to take an extended stop in Selborne at The Oates Museum and Tea Parlour. We were actually pretty muddy, so they did ask us to remove our walking boots, much to the disgust of the local gentry enjoying afternoon tea.. We also left a bit of dried mud here and there (sorry!)

Onwards from there was probably most of the worst of the mud, and it was only when we could see Hawkley far in the distance (or at least the church tower) we felt anything like being near the end of the walk. The idea of ‘it’s not far now just a few miles’ just about kept us going.

We got to The Hawkley Inn at about 6pm, having walked almost 12 miles, picked up the cars and got changed for dinner at 7pm. If you are doing this walk and need an over night you have to stop at the Hawkley Inn, it’s listed as a three star AA, but to be honest the beds, rooms and buildings were some of the best I’ve stayed in. Five really luxurious rooms with en-suite bathrooms.

Another plus point was they served Guinness and really really excellent food!! I also did a bit of magic in the evening, but I was so knackered my brain wasn’t really with it enough to do much, and I kind of jazzed it as I went along.

The forecast for the weekend was actually rain and snow, and over the pints in the evening we were joking about waking up to deep snow.. I’m not sure we could have been any more surprised to wake up to a blizzard at 8am!!!

Although we were really aching the night before, we’d left the decision about the second days walking till the morning, and as we sat waiting for the staff at the inn to struggle into the village to make us our breakfast, we decided that it would have been unwise to walk the second half that weekend. Even if the snow had stopped and melted, the mud would have been so much worse.

It also gave us the ability to book back into the Hawkley Inn for the second attempt sometime in the future!!

The walk is wonderful, and as it wasn’t raining and howling a gale as per previous walks, I managed to get some decent photos on route.

We also found a great book, Room at The Inn laying on the table at the Hawkley Inn, an AA book that details a number of good local inns with short to medium circular walks in the area, as well as local places to see and things to do.

A few snowballs later, we headed back home to clean our books, warm up, relax and unwind.

I’ve now also got a fairly good GPS track for the route from Alton down to Hawkley which I’ll post up at some point for anyone who wants to follow the same route (complete with the odd mistake!)

I can highly recommend the walk, and the accommodation at the inn, they’ll even make you up sandwiches for the following days walk (and huge ones at that!)