Refried Thoughts and Kidney Beans

Gabriella Cilmi may not be anything to write home about. But at six in the morning, carrying a heavy bag towards an inevitably busy station through the rain? There are worse ways to start the day.

Right now I'm sitting in the garden in the last patch of sun. My dad and two brothers are fixing the bench that my littlest brother broke (which was incredibly funny), and I'm streaming some music from my dad's Mac for them. And I thought this would be a good time to write a little post.

This holiday is going very quickly indeed. It's already Friday, and I'm not quite sure what I've done with the time. I know we saw WALL-E (excellent film, which I recommend highly. Seriously. I laughed my arse off, and I had a tear in my eye at the sad bit.) My littlest brother, Chris, got his A/S results. I forget what he got exactly, but they were very good. He's a smart cookie, is Chris. He's doing complicated things like maths and physics, and he wants to do physics at Exeter. Oh, and my other brother, Martin, got a job that pays £20k, which is about twice as much as I'm on now. So he's done well.

I don't think I need to point out how hypocritical Bush is being at the moment to anyone; I'm sure you already know.

I'm just getting ready to leave for London now. It's almost frightening how quickly this holiday has come around. I've been looking forward to it for so long, and now I'm not sure I'm ready for it.

I was writing an entry here about how writing can be a lot of hard work, citing an example involving my father, a crappy space opera I wrote as a teenager, and a light-hearted lamentation that my standards for myself are so high. I half-remembered a quote along the lines of writing is hard, editting is easy. For my own curiosity, I googled 'writing is hard'.

I've now deleted the entire post, and I'm glad I didn't post it. That google didn't bring up the quote, just a bunch of people whinging about how hard writing is. And it made me realise that, yes, it is hard work. It's difficult and challenging and sometimes you don't think you can do it. You stare at that computer screen and you wonder why you thought you had any talent whatsoever. And you continue typing. And when it works, it's brilliant. It's all worth it when something comes together.

P.S. And don't you just love how 'google' has become a verb?

P.P.S. The quote in the subject line isn't relevant, by the way. It's just brutally, beautifully true.

This summer I planned to do a lot of reading. Since my degree involves a lot of reading anyway, I think a lot of people assumed I'd want a break from all of that. And I did, and do, but what I want a break from is having to read books other people have picked out, and read instead all the books I would have read if I hadn't had to finish off this book of Blake's poems. And I've read a lot of interesting books, both fiction and non-fiction (oddly, the book about the history of the London Underground is a lot more interesting and scandalous than you might think). But that all seems to have been ruined.

Audrey Niffenegger wrote a book a number of years ago called The Time Traveller's Wife. This passed me by in the usual way of things, and I ran into it a week or so ago, purely because I was looking for a book I wouldn't normally buy. I bought it, thinking the natural order of things would proceed: it would sit on a shelf for a year or two before I picked it up and read it. This time, however, I opened it immediately, out of curiosity more than anything, and read it in three days. And it's brilliant. It's so brilliant I've been frightened to read anything else, for fear that it would lose out through comparison.

Everyone I've recommended it to, though, has already read it. And loved it. Which was annoying, in a way, but great too. There's something really nice about stumbling over a fantastic book that's been kicking about for ages, universally acknowledged as being brilliant, just waiting for you to come along and discover it for yourself. No hype. No expectations. Just you and a damn good book.

And speaking of books and the like, my uni modules have been assigned, so I have a rough idea of what to expect from Autumn. Lots of modernist texts as well as medieval (interesting bedfellows, those two), as well as nineteenth-century european drama. This last one was my last choice, and I only picked it because I saw someone on telly talking about Strindberg and wondered what he was on about. I hope he's good.

But before all that starts, I'm going away on a two week holiday in August. Sadly not abroad, but with sunshine like this Britain isn't too shabby right now. And it'll be nice to get away from work for a while. It all seems to be getting a bit tense at the moment. Though no doubt I'll get back and find out that everything's changed again. You honestly can't go away for two days without something changing. It's the only place I've worked that manages to combine mind-numbing monotony with a complete inability to leave things alone for more than five minutes.

Once again, the world seems to be winding itself up into a strop over regulating the Internet, somehow forgetting that it's kind of spread out over many different countries, as opposed to being in someone's basement, thus rendering it impossible to regulate. I'm not even that worried about the content they're screaming about, to be honest. Kids will find weird and frightening stuff on their own, without outside help. It's part of growing up. Adults seem to forget how robust a child's mind is anyway. They seem to think they'll shatter under the weight of anything more serious than Paddington Bear. Besides, if kids can't see freaky, frightening stuff, how will they cope when they hit eighteen and find the world is made of the stuff?

Though there was no Mac Tablet announced at WWDC, rumours abound that it's coming this year. And I for one know for a fact that I will have to buy one. Sometimes, something is just so cool that you have to get it, no matter what. Like my iPhone. And my iBook. And my iPod. And my iMac. All good purchases. I'm still annoyed that my iMac works as well as it does. It means I have no good reason to buy a new one...

Oh, and hopefully I'll have a rough draft of Electric Summons of the Busy Bell soon. It's gone through a lot of changes, this one, and I've thought a number of times before I was getting it into a good place, only to realise it would work better without him, adding her, less explosions and more iguanas. Or something.

This is awesome beyond awesomeness to the power of awe and multiplied by some.

Doesn't look like they went for it, sadly, so I'm free to share it with all and sundry. Clicking here will open the file in a new window.

The 11th July passed rather quietly in James-town. In fact, I can't remember it at all, really. A pretty non-descript day. For other people, though, the 11th July was a big day and, apparently, something of a nightmare. Looks like Apple weren't quite prepared for the flock of converts wanting an iPhone 3G or, at the very least, the iPhone 2.0 update for their original phones. Silly Apple. Still, everything looks to be sorted now, and I finally remembered last night to update my iPhone.

Let me tell you now, you need to set aside a long time for this puppy. It's not like a normal update, writing new bits of code in and overwriting old bits. No no, this backs up the phone, then wipes it entirely and installs the new firmware. This was a touch frightening, especially as I was reading about people caught up in what's been dubbed the iPocalypse and getting bricked iPhones. But all went well, if not slowly (about an hour all told), and then I could install new apps. So here's a summary of what I've downloaded.

Facebook: Slick, quick, a nicely trimmed version of Facebook. I prefer this to the iPhone site, and even the original a little. This will work great on the move. Cost: free!

Remote: Controls iTunes on the Wi-Fi network using the existing iPod UI. Brilliant idea, neatly done. Cost: free!

Shazam: Shazam's always been a nice idea, listening to a segment of whatever song is on in the background and then telling you what it is. Sadly, the service has always been overpriced. Cost: free, but with a montly subscription in the offing.

Scribble: lets you doodle on the phone. Silly and fun. Cost: free!

Blip Solitaire: A game, kind of a circular version of pong. Keep the ball from escaping off the edge of the screen. Interface is a bit poor, since your finger gets in the way a lot. But cost: free!

Tap Tap Revenge: Guitar Hero for the iPhone. Insanely fun, easy to play. Cost: free!

Shakespeare: The complete works on your iPhone. A little sluggish when scrolling. Cost: free!

RC Calendar: A calendar detailing days of importance for the Roman Catholic faith. Kills a spare moment. Cost: free!

Monkey Ball: The big one. This is what people have been looking forward to since it was previewed a few months ago. Graphics are about as good as the Nintendo DS, sound is great, controls are very sensitive and take a little getting used to. But it's great fun. Cost: £5.99

And last but not least, PhoneSaber: The best of the lot so far, this one uses the accelerometer to make relevant lightsaber sounds when you wave your phone about. Sounds incredibly stupid, and it is. But it's hilarious. Cost: free!

This all kept me up to about five in the morning.

There's a few other little improvements too, like the ability to delete numerous emails (thank the dark gods!) and supposedly improved location services even on the original iPhone (though I can't see any improvements whatsoever). But it's the App Store that makes 2.0 worth the hassle. It's made my very cool phone so much cooler, and ruined my sleep.

People have at last begun to sell their very lives on eBay.

Not much in this one. I'm in London at the moment for my sister's birthday (happy birthday, Siobhan!), and we're all sitting around her new Wii watching her boyfriend play Mario. It looks like an odd game.

Anyway, I've been meaning to post just one more link to the Waterstone's What's Your Story site. If you want to read my entry, all you need do is click on "Gallery" and then you need to view entries by surname (shame on you if you don't know mine). Unfortunately their site isn't of the best design, so I can't put a direct link here. Hopefully they, and you, will like it. I was very much going for an xkcd effect, using a very small amount of space to create a touching moment. Randall Munroe is, of course, much better than this than I, but I hope I've come somewhere close.

* * *

Got back from a meal for my sister's birthday. Italian, from Zizzi's, so I'm pleasantly full. Somehow still watching her boyfriend play Mario, though.

It being my sister's birthday I obviosuly had to give her a present, so I took her to see John Mayer. I actually introduced my sister to John Mayer, and have enjoyed his music for a good few years now, but I've never really thought about going to see him live. I'm happy to say that I've been missing out. He's an excellent performer. I recommend you check him out. If you visit his website, you can listen to a few of his songs for free, including one of my favourites "I Don't Trust Myself With Loving You".

Hmm. Super Mario Galaxy looks pretty fun. I was never a big fan of Mario 64. Or Mario Sunshine, or whatever the Gamecube one was called. I think this one is being made more interesting by the Wiimote. As if I needed another reason to want a Wii.

One last thing, just to say that if you like Michael Crichton books, State of Fear is an excellent read. But like all Crichton's, the story comes second to the science an awful lot. But thankfully, he writes about the science well. In this case, he writes about global warming, and it's interesting reading.

I think that's enough for now.

I'm sure everyone can relate to this one: every teacher or other authority-figure-related-to-education that has ever spoken to you about taking exam will, at some point or another, tell you this: "always read the question". There are variants, of course. Sometimes they'll add words like "carefully", or "a few times" or "out loud", though the people who tell you the last one are probably trying to play an unpleasant joke on you. And if you're anything like me, you will have listened to their advice, all the while thinking something like: yeah yeah, this is obvious stuff you're telling me here.

Well, the inevitable has happened. I didn't read the instructions carefully. In writing an entry for the Waterstones What's Your Story competition, which I've probably mentioned before, I read "stories must be no longer than three hundred words". So I duly wrote something far shorter, shy of three hundred words actually. But it said six hundred characters. This is more like one hundred words.

Bugger.

So, the exams. They're done. It was pretty weird sitting at a tiny table in a big hall with a question paper again. Both times I turned said paper over I suffered a minute of complete blind panic, which was new. But they got done, and I'm pretty certain I'm going to pass.

The time spent has largely been a metaphorical sigh of relief. The first year, done. I spent a few days not sure what to do with myself, which has now morphed into a need to do lots of things. Firstly, I need to finish my story for SFX. Their competition, which was announced in what seemed to me like a bit of a rush, closes in less than a week and I'm really not ready. Ideally, I'd want a month, but I'm pretty sure I can have something ready in time. There's also this little thing from Waterstone's as part of this National Year of Reading thing, which could be fun.

Moving on, I read this in an interview with Brian Michael Bendis the other day that made me laugh:

"Bike riding is a big part of my activity now ... It's just something about cardiovascular activity and the brain: scenes start happening in my head and the characters start talking and I can't get home fast enough."

My laughter was largely because when I exercise, my mind is pretty much preoccupied with thoughts like "has it been half an hour yet?", "man, this is tiring" and "uh-oh, I think a muscle just exploded".

(For anyone interested, Brian Michael Bendis is a very good comics writer. If you haven't read any of his work yet, I recommend it. I only know of his Marvel stuff, but I enjoyed my favourites so far have been House of M and the New Avengers.)

My dad sent me this the other day and told me to be grateful that I'm not related to this man. I am. I thought my little brother was hyperactive, but he can't hold a candle to Clifford Stoll.

With the WWDC coming up, the Apple rumour mill seems to be having an embolism of sorts. The 3G iPhone looks like a certainty, although there's also a suggestion of a surprise product, possibly a tablet PC of some sorts. Which is annoying, because now I want one. Not, however, based on the patent illustration.

Finally, I've often suspected it, but this advert confirms that Bill Cosby has no decent grip on reality. Because it's made of pudding, every mother will love it, will they Bill? What were all the other snacks made of? Shoe leather?

When you cook spaghetti, the individual - well, strings I guess you'd call them - the individual strings kind of drift around in the pan. Sometimes they drift at the top. Sometimes the bottom. Sometimes they kind of loop all over the place. And, occasionally, life remembers he's got the pasta on and gives it all a big stir. Right now, life has stirred university to the top of the pan. This is unsurprising, since there are exams coming up (way, way, way too soon. Siobhan, if you're reading this, you don't know how lucky you are to have those extra weeks.) But also because I got some essays back.

And I think they're trying to teach me the wrong lessons.

When I was at school my dad always tried to get me to do my schoolwork before I did anything else. His thinking was that if I did it all first, I wouldn't be worrying about it for the rest of the evening/weekend/holiday. Unfortunately, I was a cocky little shite and I didn't even think about it, let alone worry. But that idea has always bounced around in my head as the responsible way to approach essays and work and, you know, stuff like that. The UEA seem to want to disillusion me of this idea. Because I wrote my Literature in History essay at four in the morning, spaced out of my head on Red Bull and sleep deprivation. I still can't remember writing it. And they gave me a 73. Similarly, my Concepts essay was written about a book I finished reading that night, on a subject the lecture for which I'd managed to miss, again at four in the morning. And that got 68-ish.

I seem to remember a character in Studio 60 saying something about a 4 AM miracle, that sleep deprivation eroded some kind of barriers in the brain. Maybe he was onto something. But one nice side-effect of this little tale is that some of my worry about the upcoming exams is alleviated. It's brought back a little bit of the old cocky little shite. Whether that's for better or worse remains to be seen :)

A few asides as well before I finish. They Say Hello In Silence Now was rejected from another market, this one a good-looking and better-reading 'zine called Jupiter. It's probably time to retire it now. I'm starting to see too many things that I'd want to change before I submitted it again, a sign that it's time to just start shopping around something else. Probably Electric Bell if I ever get a chance to finish the bloody thing...

I'll also share the creative part of today's essay. I had to translate one text into another and write a commentary on it. The original was Neil Gaiman's Reading the Entrails: A Rondel, which I failed to turn into a drabble, so I went with something a little longer.

Reading the Entrails: A Sesquidrabble

We were playing poker with a tarot deck when she walked into the pub. I had The Fool, The Hanged Man and The Tower.

“I fold,” I said as she walked over.

She said that she wanted to know the future.

“Do you know what you’re asking, love?” She did. “Alright then.” I put out my fag and led her upstairs.

The room was dark and dank, the walls spattered with dirty red stains.

“Lie on the table.”

Her ragged breath betrayed her fear but, to her credit, she didn’t flinch or cry out as I worked. And when I held up the entrails for her to see, she smiled, and her eyes glittered with knowledge beyond my reach.

I went back downstairs, wiping sweat and blood from my face.

“Deal me in.”

The Fool, The Hanged Man and the Tower. I waited for the next one to walk in.

Finis.

Now, while I am trying to remind myself that this does not necessarily mean that the job is done, we've finally got to a place where we can replace my Dad's old site with the new one.

It's here. Go and have a look. I hope you like it.

So it's been a long time since the last post. This is a combination of two factors: not a lot happening that's worth writing about; and having a lot to do. [Edit: In amongst which I need to, apparently, learn to the spell "preparation".]

Like right now, when I have an essay to finish. But I'm not procrastinating. No siree, Bob. This is a writing exercise. Gets the part of the brain that do the writing working. You know, like warming up the engine on a cold morning.

Only a small percentage of that is bullshit.

While I'm on uni, it's got that stage in the semester when things are beginning to slide a little. I had a moment like this last semester too, where it seems to pile up a little too much and I let go. I'm not worried about it, though. When I was at school I had an annoying habit of doing very little and getting by just fine. I'm certain that habit will assist me. It did last semester. (At this point the writer crosses his fingers and whispers a quick prayer to whichever particular sprite is watching over him.)

The writing is going very slowly. So slowly that to the naked eye it doesn't seem to be progressing at all. This would be a side-effect of uni. That, and I'm kind of bending my creative muscles to an assignment we've been set: translate one text into a different form of text. So, for instance, a poem into prose. Very weird. Not easy at all.

I've been thinking of doing a short and sweet summary of the semester so far, book by book, since everyone always likes to know what sort of thing we're reading, so here's a few that come to mind:

T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land: Not quite an epic poem, but still long. Very odd and very metaphorical. Excellent though.

Jospeh Conrad's Heart of Darkness: Hailed as a classic, but reads as if it needed a few more rewrites. Doesn't compare well with Apocalypse Now, which was based on this book.

May Sinclair's The Life and Death of Harriett Frean: Little known novel about gender, morality, and change. Interestingly and beautifully written.

Italo Calvino's If On A Winter's Night A Traveller: Breaks a dozen conventions on each page, brilliantly different, although it's beginning to wear a little thin.

James Hogg's The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner: Densely but powerfully written, though the titular sinner has yet to do anything more sinful than looking funny at his brother and getting in the way of a tennis match.

I have to read two for next week that are both ghost stories. This does not combine well with last night's earthquake, nor does it contribute to much sleep.

And I have linky joy to share.

This is indeed so rare as to be newsworthy.

As a word of reassurance to Charles Clarke, it's not your age that rules you out, Charlie, more your astonishing lack of competence.

I've not finished watching all of these yet, but they're a marvelous combination of hilarity and mind-boggling, outrageous statements that will make you shout at the screen in disbelief.

And two hits from Penny Arcade that I thought were worth sharing. These made me laugh hard, which only goes to show what sort of sense of humour I have. Anyone who's played Star Fox will know how true this is, and anyone who's been a customer of Virgin Media will also find a shard of reality.

Well, actually, I did forget. On Saturday night, after spending far too long reading and rereading and rereading the preface for a book that I have to write an essay on, I decided it was time to call it a night. It was about two in the morning, and I'd had enough. So I shut the computer down, grab my empty water bottle and head downstairs to fill it up. My head is still full of words, so I'm not paying much attention to what I'm doing. I fill the bottle from the tap, take a slug - I suddenly realise how long I've gone without a drink and down nearly all of it, so I fill it again - and start making my way upstairs, turning the lights off as I go. I kill the living room light and go to climb the stairs.

That's when I heard the noise.

Let's be clear here. This wasn't a tap or a creak or the groan of an old house settling down for the night. This was a bang. Startled and startling. It kicks my heart up a couple of dozen beats a minute. It doesn't help that I read and watch too many ghost stories for my own good. When it's dark and there are odd noises, I immediately think of all those stories, and they scare the living bejezus out of me. And then I replay the moment in my head. And that's when I realise that, yes, that wasn't next door. That noise came from inside the house. It came from the living room.

Every lightswitch in reach is flipped, including the living room, and there's another bang. I venture into the room, not knowing what to expect. The room is empty, but the curtain looks wrong. There's something behind the curtain. Jesus, what the hell is going on?

"What the hell?" I mutter, and the curtain moves.

And a bloody cat pops it's head out.

This is rather surprising to me, since I don't own a cat. I believe I let out some kind of exclamation, probably along the lines of "What the fuck are you fucking doing in here?" and the cat appears to have twigged that he's overstayed his welcome. He's out of here. Runs past me and into the back of the house. Turns out he got in through the cat flap in the back door, the cat flap I locked on the very first day we moved in. I remember I was less concerned about cats than people, and what they might do with a large hole in someone's door. But I imagine the inspector the landlord sent round wanted to test the flap and didn't bother to lock it.

Gee, thanks. I'll send you the bill for my sodding heart attack.

So I was disciplined on Thursday. It was a bit of an anti-climax. I'd never been witness to a formal disciplinary, but I kinda thought it would involve a lot more talking, possibly even a bit of an argument...just generally be a bit more dramatic.

All that happened was the Balding Boss Man asked what was going on. Why was I bouncing so many calls? And how did this percentage increase after I'd been warned about it? I told him, in no uncertain terms, that I was demotivated and generally irritated by the job. The warning had pissed me off and I'd stopped caring. I thought I was being too honest for own good, but there's not really a good excuse and I couldn't be bothered to argue about it. The important decision had already been made: after talking to my dad, I'd decided not to hand in my notice and to stay the course. The worst this disciplinary could do was issue me with a written warning. Which is nothing. BBM listened to me, then went away for five minutes. Then he came back and gave me a verbal warning. It was all over in twenty minutes.

Not very blogworthy, I know, but I couldn't have just mentioned it once and never again. But work is better - well, no, it's not better, it's the same, but I'm bored of being pissed off about it - and uni is going okay. The reading is starting to pile up, though. Some days I wake up and wonder how they expect anyone to be able to read this much in a week. It takes me only a few moments to realise that most students, especially those in their first year, only have lectures and seminars taking up their free time. It's usually after this realisation that you can hear some kind of muttered curse from my lips, but honestly I prefer my situation now to my situation the first time around. It was so boring that first time. Now I haven't got a moment in which to be bored.

I still haven't managed to pick another market to send They Say Hello... to. I always seem to remember when all my resources are out of reach. On the bus. In the pub. On the toilet. Unhelpful, Mr Brain. The robot story is going well, though (this being the original one, not the anthology I mentioned a post or two back). I've ruled out two ways of starting the story. Although one of them, I decided, would be a good place to start if I was filming it. But I'm not, so out it goes.

Continuing our look at the news in Norwich, today we're less concerned about the article itself, though it is a thoroughly dull, sleepy-little-village tale. No, it's the headline I'm concerned about. Was this proofread after a few pints?

This is an interesting site, called the Student Swap Shop. (Good work on the ol' alliteration.) Sadly, the blessed little students don't quite seem to understand the concept, and a lot of them seem to be asking cash in return for their stuff. Which, if we're being all picky and pedantic about it, is called selling.

Muppets.

As an aside, it went to bed at half three last night/this morning, and got up at half nine. That's six hours, and I've been exhausted on the same when getting up at six. But I feel fine. Just going to show that it's not the amount of hours you get, just whether or not the hour of waking is ungodly or not.

I think I may have to rethink this "having weekends off" idea. The notion was I'd have two full days to do uni stuff. As it is, I do as much uni work as I ever did. I always have really good plans, but the sheer excitement of having forty-eight hours to myself goes to my head and I go a bit loopy. So, a rethink is in order.

This weekend, the sum total of my uni work is reading about Joseph Conrad a bit, reading an article by Chinua Achebe that calls Conrad a massive racist (Achebe's not that out there, if you ask me), and reading the first chapter of the very weird but very delightful If On A Winter's Night A Traveller. Go me. But I did have an awesome night out on Saturday, even if I did smoke a little bit. Bad James :(

In terms of writing I can't decide whether to stop work on my current story to dedicate some time to this, or whether it would work as a submission. It doesn't really seem "beyond" enough. I don't know. I'll probably carry on, and by the time I make a decision I'll have finished it.

I've just remembered, I haven't posted this. Neo-opsis declined on "They Say Hello In Silence Now", but they did send me my first personal rejection. Which seems to confuse people when I tell them about it. Basically, a personal rejection is more than a form letter. So instead of "No thanks" it's a "No thanks, because of this". Which means they read the whole thing, rather than the first paragraph (or, if you're really unlucky, the first sentence). Here's what they said:

We received your story submission, "They Say Hello In Silence Now", on January 29, 2008. "They Say Hello In Silence Now" is the 3929th submission received by Neo-opsis Science Fiction Magazine.

"They Say Hello In Silence Now" does not fit our needs, but thank you for giving us the chance to consider it.

The premise of the story was interesting, but the story as a whole didn't work for me. It seemed like the story makes its points effectively, but there were so many variables that didn't seem to be address that in the end the story wasn't as effective as it might have been. Still, another publisher may love the story just as it is.

This was exciting. Hell, I'm smiling now.

This post is getting long. Time for some links, and then I'm "gonna juice".

This is possibly the funniest blog ever. The blogger's commentary is almost unnecessary.

I challenge anyone who reads this blog not to feel the need to turn on all the lights, eat ice cream and watch reruns of Friends.

And if you're running a Mac, this is quite a cool tip. It works for music on MySpace too, and probably a good deal of other things.

I just had the worst day. I've been finding it hard enough to stick with my job at the minute, but today my manager informed me that she wants to discipline me for my bounce rate. And probably again for next month for my target. That meeting kind of crystalised the situation for me. When she asked if I wanted to say anything, I started to talk but then realised I couldn't be bothered anymore. Which was deeply depressing.

Then when it came time to go home, it was snowing. Heavily. There was a bitterly cold wind, very strong. The snow was thrown into your face. And I was wearing my trainers. The Nike running shoes. The ones with the vents in the top. By the time I was home, I couldn't feel my face, and my shoes had absorbed so much water that I could feel it sloshing around inside. I had to wring out my socks and my hair was frozen together.

And I was in the best mood.

Honestly, I had to stop myself from laughing out loud a couple of times as the wind whistled through my soaked jeans and I realised I had never been so cold in my life. What an odd experience. Who laughs at that? I suppose it was a laugh or cry thing, but I did have a moment where I wondered if this was really a sign of a healthy mind. Meh. I've had the heating on full for two hours, eaten a pizza and watched Hot Fuzz, so I don't care anymore.

Hot Fuzz is a damn good film, by the way. I can see why people say it's not as good as Shaun of the Dead, simply because it's in the same vein; the joke's less funny second time around. But I could not recommend it enough.

And, on an unrelated note, I was listening to Gwen Stefani's "Love Angel Music Baby" the other day, and realised that most of the songs on there sound like they came from a game of Sonic the Hedgehog. If you take out the lyrics, that is...

And, continuing our humorous look at the news in Norwich, we applaud this young reporter for not trying to shoehorn a dramatic story into the news. Though a point would have been nice.

EDIT: for clarity

"Bounce rate" is a term used at the big-orange-and-blue place. A call will only stay at your phone for a certain (and delightfully unknown) number of rings before bouncing off to someone else's phone to try its luck there. Letting a call do this is called "bouncing" and your "bounce rate" is the percentage of calls that bounced.

As an aside, if you write the word "bounce" too many times it starts to look wrong. So wrong you may go find your dictionary to check the spelling.

There are times when I miss London. The size of it, the centrality of it, the smell of it. If you ever find yourself bored in London, all you need to do is take one step to the left or right from your regular path and a whole new world can reveal itself to you. Anyone can be anything. It's a brilliant, exciting, awesome place to live.

But there are times when I realise how much fun it can be to live in Norwich. And that's "fun" in the sense of "funny".

For instance, I wonder exactly how a large and stationary object, whilst perhaps inconvenient, can be classed as dangerous if it isn't wired and strapped to a ton of C4.

And I wonder how Norwich thinks it's ever going to be thought of again as an important place if this is the best criminal mastermind it can create.

Honestly, the Evening News is like a sketch show in a newspaper.