The Word Cloud

November is not the best month to celebrate a birthday. The weather can be inclement, but mostly I dislike the wet dreary ones. Today was like a spring day. I got up late, as the dog needed to go out in the night! 2 am. he can cut that out.
Pressies in bed, up to find a most humbling, beautiful bunch of flowers.
Then I went for a walk to pick up pine cones that had hopefully been blown down in the storm. I am going to dip them in scented candle wax and tie them in cellophane for Xmas presents. Someone had beaten me to the best ones, I need to get up earlier.
Then tea at Earthlights Cafe where my children and grandchildren gave me kisses and their cards. And a lovely chocolate cake with candles!! The youngest thought it wasn't a very nice party as we weren't playing very nice games for me so I had to get under the tables for hide and seek and play ISpy. :) While the older ones enjoyed cahtting to their friends on their mobiles. (Glad to have their attention for five minutes).
Then I come home to messages from Cloudie friends. How lovely, thank you all.
What more can a day bring. Great!!
Now off to dinner at a restaurant by the sea! In a shop that I owned and ran for years making a pittance, and the till used to be next to the window bay that we will be sitting in for dinner. We never could have imagined it in a million years!
Life is so strange - but wonderful.
I will have to keep getting up and walking about as my epidural is quite painful. Or my back is after the epi.
Where ever you all are - go well and enjoy your weekend.
Off to change and try and not look so much like a grandma!!

Gosh, it's been a long time since I've posted on this site.

That's partly because I've been away on holiday - three weeks in the Caribbean and my first foreign holiday for 15 years. Somebody (see photo) seems quite excited about that.

But I've also been insanely busy doing some hands-on work for a WW client. The project is all a bit too confidential for me to actually tell you anything about it, but we already have a brilliant deal from a major UK publisher. Publication date: early next year. We're approaching US publishers in a couple of weeks time. Then the world. I've been working really hard on this, but things are looking very positive.

Also, shiver my timbers, we're planning a huge website overhaul. A totally new look - more modern, less fusty. It's amazing how fast fashions change in the web world, but the truth is those fashion changes do improve the ease of reading and using websites. So we're scurrying after the fashionistas and will have something that's just sooo 2012. Launch of the new site will probably be next month. I'm not sure yet whether we'll make huge changes to the Word Cloud site though. I mean, it's kind of cosy here, isn't it?

Meanwhile, I'm sure there's something I'm meant to be doing. Can't think what it is ... but I do have this weird recurring dream where I'm meant to be writing my second detective novel and there's a deadline fast approaching and I've only got 20,000 words actually written and ...

Gulp. Erm. Sorry, need to rush.

I'm not yet totally convinced that this isn't a fake but it's worth a chuckle or two. The best bit is the inadvertent humour that arises from US/UK English differences....

Nat Lofthouse, who played the beautiful game like a ballet dancing brick built dunny died at the weekend. I didn't create this. It was doing the email humour internet rounds a few years ago. When I heard the news I thought of this, with its recreation of the game as it was played in his days, its elegant language and eloquent use of profanity. But until just now, I couldn't find it.

Be warned, there is significant profanity in what follows.

Here's to Nat Lofthouse - one of the greats

**********************************************************

I'm feeling all angry about these modern day footballers, I know why they
have gone all soft - it's because of poncy names. That's what it is.

Remember in the old days, when footy players kicked a fucking ball made out of ten pound of clay stitched inside a steel-reinforced leather shell with
laces made out of piano wire? Well, in them days players could only survive
the rigours of the game because they were called things like Albert,
Arthur, Bert, Harry, Bill, Eddie, Bob, Jack and Tommy. Fucking tough names for tough men, them was. And what do we have now? Brian, Wayne, Dean, Ryan, Jamie, Robbie. Fucking tarts' names, they are. Great big fucking poofs. No wonder the ball's like a fucking balloon and shin pads is like slices of bread.

In the old days you never saw a Len Shackleton or a Billy Wright with a
poofy little Sondico piece of paper down his little thin socks. Fucking
shinpads in them days was made out of library books, and socks was like
sackcloth. Same with the jerseys. fucking shirts with holes in now so they
can breathe. Yes, so that little Jody's hairless chest can breathe and he
doesn't get a chill. fuck off. Stanley Matthews used to dribble round
Europe's finest wearing a fucking tent and shorts cobbled together from the
jacket of his de-mob suit. Aye, he fucking did. No wonder players fall over
all the time whenever an opponent comes anywhere near them. And they never used to show their arses at one another either. Can you imagine what might have happened if Don Revie had flashed his ring at Nat Lofthouse during a City-Bolton Wanderers game? He'd have got one of them size-10 hobnail fuckers up his bastard chuff. And fucking therapy for stress my arse! Stan Collymore slaps his missus about and he takes three seasons off with stress counselling. What the fuck is that all about?

In the old days it was expected for footballers to belt the old sow about a
bit, especially after a bad defeat. And the women used to expect it, and so
they should have. They was lucky to be married to footballers. Ha! Trevor
Morley got a kitchen knife in his back off his wife and was out of action
for three month. Soft twat. Archie McShitt of Port Vale got run over with
horse and cart one Friday night and he still turned out against Bradford the
following day. And he scored two goals. That's cos his name wasn't
"Trevor".

Good old Archie. Broke his hip, both his legs, murdered his wife and buried
her under the patio and still made the England team for the Home
Internationals. Did he have any "stress counselling"? Did he bollocks! And
drugs? There was none of that in the old days. Oh, no. In them days it was a
quick shot of morphine before kick-off and you was lucky if you got that.
By half-time it had all but wore off so they pumped you full of laudanum. None of this cocaine sniffing and shooting up class A narcotics.

Goal celebrations? Don't talk to me about goal celebrations. Crawling on the
floor and thrusting their hips at the crowd. Huh! I'd like to have seen
Cliff Bastin do that after a run down the left flank and crossing for Alex
James to fire home a winner. Handshakes...and that was all you got. That
and a wank in the showers afterwards. But it was a proper wank...all man stuff. None of these poofy wanks between blokes that you get nowadays with players like Graeme Le Saux and Stephen Gerrard; Allegedly. In them days, there was nowt wrong with it cos it didn't mean owt. They used to say there was a "gay atmosphere" in the dressing room after the match. But it didn't mean owt mucky. Just a bit of harmless spanking the plank among healthy young sportsmen. Aye. I know. Me dad told me.

Sixty grand a fucking week? Ha! I wouldn't pay 'em tuppence. Two bob Tommy Lawton used to get...a month! And Tom Finney still worked as a plumber four days a week when he was playing for England. It's true, you know it fucking is. Players had to work them days just to make up their money. Not like today. Stan Pearson had to clean sewers and doubled up as Old Trafford shithouse cleaner. He had to go off during one game because some arsehole had built a log cabin and blocked the U-bend. And that Eddie Hapgood was a male model...though he never liked to talk about it.

So I say we start calling kids real male names again. If you're having a
kid, don't even consider poofy names and shite names like what people call
their kids these days. Otherwise what we gonna get in twenty years' time?
The England team full of players called Keanu, Ronan, Ashley and fucking
Chesney? Fuck that! Call your kids Alf, Herbert, Len, Frank, Fred and Wilf.
And let's get the poofy names out of the game once and for all.

I have recently been given this link by a fabulous Twitter follower who thought that I may be interested. I thought that I would pass it on to you guys. It is a little old fashioned but i'm sure you will get the gist.
For those that completed Nano, this would have been helpful before hand; sorry.

http://ghostwoods.com/2010/05/how-to-write-a-book-in-three-days-1210/#comment-1870/

Enjoy!

I have lots to tell you guys so I will put up a proper blog soon! Haven't had a great deal of time recently and have set myself a hard challenge for today, so i'm off to carry on with my 10k words!

Kiki xx

PS The word count the formula is based on is low, 60k, I increased this to 80k for my attempt.

Just before Christmas I went to a preview screening of The Next Three Days. Due to be released nationwide on 5th January 2011, The Next Three Days is the latest film by writer-director Paul Haggisstarring Russell Crowe and Elizabeth Banks.

The story follows teacher John Brennan (Crowe) who, when his wife is convicted for murder (I’m not going to tell you if she did it – that would spoil the film for you!), sets out to clear her name.  When his attempts fail, and she tries to take her own life, he decides to break her out of prison.

What then follows feels rather like a fly-on-the-wall eye view of John Brennan – an everyman with no special prison-breaking skills – plotting and preparing for the prison break also trying to keep life as ‘normal’ for his young son Luke (Ty Simpkins) as possible.

As a thriller it’s perhaps a little predictable, but as a character study of a man driven to an extreme act in order to protect the woman he loves, I think it’s an engaging drama with plenty of suspense. 

I know, shocker.
Excuse the cheesy title, but it just popped into my head.

I've had a great day! Went to my friend's house, rode her horses and then went for a drive in an empty field. I only stalled a couple of times, and actually went faster than two miles an hour, so that was a success! We made crispy cakes too
and watched Resident Evil :)

Now i'm at home and I keep telling my mum that i'm "packing", which is actually sitting with my feet on my suitcase reading my synopsis advice :)

I also had a great phonecall, which probably won't go any further than just the call, but nevertheless it shows that my "second job" idea won't go totally out the window just yet ;) So fingers crossed.

I WAS very excited until this morning.  We have just completed our new farm office, having spent 23 years with our office in our dining room.  I can't remember the last time we invited friends round for a cosy evening of fine dining and fine wine.  Having to keep important paperwork ten years has caused a huge storage problem, sooooo finally last year we had a very old, small stable block pulled down and a very nice timber frame stable type building put up.  A year later the end part is fully insulated, glazed, lined, painted, new floor, some new office furniture (courtesy of a well known Swedish firm) and hey presto, we're ready to go........................NOT.  All we wanted was a new phone line into the office to connect the answerphone/fax and computer broadband.  Simples I hear you say.  Not according to BT.  After two visits from the engineers and yet another survey, a charming Scottish lady called me this morning and told me an extra cost would be involved in putting this into practice and was I sitting down.  The cost?  A mind blowing £28,000.  Yes, £28,000. 

Funnily enough we won't be having a new phone line into the office after all.  So I have a lovely new office, with lots of shelves for all my files but if I won't to do any bookwork I have to bring all my files back into the dining room...............................

£28,000...............I'm still reeling.

Oh and now the central heating has packed up.  Lovely Monday.

The Bank Holiday Many people are of the belief that its ‘those’ three words that can reduce a man to a quivering jellyfish….that can make him consider selling his organs in order to buy that one way ticket to South America…that can prompt the ultimate fallback of its not you its me ok… Granted, I love you is scary but it’s a moment- it’ll pass. However the more fearsome two words in the British vocabulary that are not as quick in their passing and rear their ugly heads in the months of May…August… have to be Bank Holiday. Is there no more a fearsome, daunting reality to a man who wakes up on the Bank Holiday Monday having consumed the obligatory brewery on the Sunday (because you’re off work on the following day) to hear the immortal words from their partner…’lets have a drive out somewhere’…..’doesn’t our (and select your own torturous insert) garden/kitchen/dining room/bathroom look dated!!!’ Lets face it Bank Holidays don’t work. Many things are blamed for stress…moving house, financial difficulties, family conflict etc but let’s not rule out the good old Bank Holiday. Only in this lifetime would we get Monday as our holiday. Our bodies are not conditioned to being happy on a Monday. The mind more often than not develops man flu type symptoms, regresses to our youth asking our mum(or the now adult equivalent of a flatmate, best friend, work colleague) to ring in school, sorry work, to declare our impending death or in keeping with modern noughties times a sleeping related injury be it a twist, spasm, strain etc.. Why is it a British obsession that on a day off from work…a time to relax...unwind we choose to scrum down with the masses in the DIY, Garden, Shopping centres of this great nation of ours. That is of course after we’ve had the foreplay of sending our blood pressure into orbit with the traffic chaos. Why not get up….have a leisurely breakfast…walk to meet friends, have lunch…a few drinks…watch a few DVD’s…although brace yourself that the few drinks will inevitably land YOU in trouble meaning you’ll have to concede to a chick flick DVD…curse that Sarah Jessica Parker. However if we were to follow this simplistic itinerary what would we all moan about at work on the Tuesday morning!!

I have had enough with my stupid family.

My dad works from home and so is always here. He is also switching companies so is under a lot of stress.
My mum is jobhunting so is usually in a bad mood or moaning at the rest of us.
My sister is also jobhunting but has so many "issues" I doubt she will ever get anything done. She always gets an incredible amount of support from my mother, whereas I get told to "get on with it."
I have left school and am not going to Uni. I love my house and my family *when we are all busy* but this period (that seems to have lasted forever) is really getting me down.

I need to decide whether I want a second job or whether I want to do courses and I have no clue. Not only am I not 18 and underqualified, but the current job market is also against me.

To top it all off, my chosen career path (writing for film and televison) that I have sacrificed pretty much everything for,  is competitive, impossible, difficult, unreliable and I probably won't achieve it. But the less I do, the less I want to do. I can feel myself retreating inside myself, feeling less brave by the day, but I can't bring myself to do something about it. I don't even feel motivated about my story any more. I have lost my fire.

So I'm screwed really.