Tag: Non Fiction

There’s this affliction going about

It’s not new, it’s been around for a while.

Everyone seems to be talking to themselves and I think it has something to do with smoking, perhaps a side effect.

You know how it is, you are walking along the sidewalk and someone near you starts talking.  You turn around thinking they are talking to you, but they are not.

And then they take a puff of a cigarette.

It’s not an uncommon assumption to think they are going mad.

But the thing is, if you take a closer look you notice they have a Bluetooth device in their ear and they are really talking to someone out there in cyberspace.

Or for the uninitiated, they’re talking on their mobile phone.

Not that many years ago, men in white suits would be collecting these people and taking them to an asylum typically called Bellevue.  It was the stuff of 1950’s horror films.  You really didn’t want to be caught talking to yourself.

It, of course, has a number of symptoms, this condition we’ll call cybersickness.

Like, for instance, wandering aimlessly.  Or bumping into people.  Or walking in front of cars on the street.  Or falling off the edges of sidewalks, which can result in very, very bad injuries.

You could be forgiven for thinking these people are hearing voices in their heads telling them what to do.

But, as a worst-case scenario, we could say we have just created a viable excuse for these people.

I suppose it’s better than locking them up because, at the end of the day, our jails would be full to overflowing.
One thing is for certain, I think a lot of them are already living in their own world, oblivious to everyone and everything about them.
Now, as for using phones in cars, just don’t get me started.

Mall shopping can be interesting

I’m wandering through a shopping mall.  Not exactly what you’d expect from a writer looking for ideas.

Not that I came to the mall with that in mind, we have to do some shopping and a visit to the bank.

It’s one of those odd things this writer does, subconsciously looking for characters, character traits, or plots.

One came to me when I saw someone running.  Had they stolen an item and were they running from the store manager?  Were they escaping from a situation?  Perhaps they were just trying to catch up to the rest of their party.

Then, in another corner, not so private from everyone else, a couple is having an argument.  They are young.  There could be any number of subplots going on, were they breaking up?  Had one found out the other was cheating?  Were they married and discovered they were about to have a child they couldn’t afford?

Shopping malls are not exactly places that can be woven into a story unless it’s about teen angst, and there’s a lot of that in the after school hours and k as the night shopping.  I have never understood the need for teens to gather together and wander the halls of a shopping center.  Perhaps it’s just to hang out, whatever that means.

My teens used to gather and go to the cinema.  Years later we discovered they used to get drunk first then go to the cinema and misbehave.  It seemed like one of the passages of rites thing for young people.  Not in my day, but things were different for them.  Nowadays it’s all about drugs and rage parties

Is this the sort of angst that finds it’s way into ya novels even though they have a paranormal and/or fantasy theme.  People are still people no matter what the setting, so are we trying to sort out the problems of youth living in the current perilous times against a mythical background?

So much for finding subplots, now I’m looking at solving the world’s problems. I guess it’s time to go to the bank and solve my own problems and leave the rest to more competent people than myself.

Still, food for thought.  Perhaps a short chat with my 16-year-old granddaughter might make some sense of it.

Where is that glamorous life of an Author?

I’m currently sitting in my car waiting to pick the grandchildren up from school wondering where that dream of the glamorous life of an author went.

Can it be said that any author leads a glamorous life, except for maybe J K Rowling, James Patterson, and a handful of others?

That dream is of course only a dream.  I did not start this writing caper to become rich and famous or live a glamorous life.  I started It, and it continues in the same vein, that I have a lot of stories in my head that I want to get on paper.

If anyone else wants to read them, then that’s a bonus.  If I happen to make enough money, rather than live high on the hog, an expression my father often used to describe the rich, I would happily invest in programs that get young people reading more.

It also strikes me that it would be difficult to write a literary novel in the vein of Jane Austen or the Bronte sisters, to name a few because modern-day life has no real meaning like it did then.

Instant news, instant communications, and the rest of the country, as well as the world, do close, we can go anywhere, and communicate instantly.  In the days of classic literature, the protagonist’s exchange of letters, and the arduous traveling to another part of the same country would be enough to generate a chapter, or the visit itself could generate several.

But those tales of life were always about people of means, not the ordinary people.  Stories that have the minutiae of daily life do not appeal.  No one wants to read about their lives, they want to be transported to another world where there is no such inanity like cooking, cleaning, washing, and picking up children.

I’m using this time to write another episode or chapter, or, in this case, a blog post.

As any parent will tell you, it is the calm before the storm.

Nostalgia

Ever hear someone say it was better in the old days?

I have.

I’ve been guilty of saying it myself.

But, was it?

When I was a child there was no such thing as personal computers and calculators.  Everything came out of books, and maths had to be done in your head.

Holidays were about joining up with other neighbourhood children and making your own entertainment.  I remember for a long time, as a child, we didn’t have television.

It was down to the meadows near the creek to pick blackberries, swim in the water, or raiding new housing estates for offcuts to build a cubby house.

Not like today with television, video players, movies-on-demand, personal computers, game boys, and a plethora of other entertainment choices.

Were we better off back in the old days?

We were in the sun with no idea that sunburn led to cancer and death.  Sunscreen was unheard of, so in that regard maybe not.

In the old days, the only telephones were in the house and were expensive to use.  You could have a coloured phone so long as it was black and made of bakelite.

It was a long time before we had plastic coloured phones or even wall phones.  Those were also the days of telephone boxes, the only way they make a call when away from home.

Now every man and his dog has a mobile phone/computer while on the move.  I know, the dogs keep crashing into me on the street.

And then I also remember my father saying it’s not like the old days, so I had to wonder what he meant.

Perhaps it is an oft-used but less understood lament for a time when we remember we were happy and carefree, those days before mortgages, children, maxed out credit cards, and the children’s mobile phone bills.

In a word: Yellow

It was an easy choice from the start, yellow is a colour, in any number of shades from very pale to very dark.

We have yellow egg yolks, yet another y word, and depending on whether the eggs are farmed in cages or free range can dictate the shade of yellow.  Free-range gives the brightest yellow, by the way.

We have yellow cabs, but oddly enough these cabs are orange, not yellow as in this country, though the same may not be the case overseas, particularly in New York.  Good thing they are bright yellow so you can see them coming if you are crossing the road, perhaps illegally.

We have yellow bananas and lemons, probably the most common answers when asked, what is yellow?  That, and perhaps the yellow rose of Texas.

Then there is a more sinister meaning of the word, and it is associated with cowardice, and cowards are said to have a yellow streak down their backs.

If you have yellow fever then you are in a whole world of pain.

You can sometimes have what appears to be yellow skin, a sign of jaundice.

There is a yellow sea, and then there are the yellow pages, sometimes a substitute name for a telephone directory of businesses.

And lastly, an expression that comes out of the past, and not used so much these days, but people from Asia were thought to have yellow skin.

Living in the 1920s – if only I could!

I’ve often thought that I should have been born in the early 1900s and lived through what might be called the halcyon days of the ’20s and ’30s.

Of course, it is only a matter of opinion if those days were good or bad, depending on who you were.

If I’d been the heir apparent to become Lord of the manor, or from any part of upper classes with a University education, I have no doubt that I would not have been spared the horrors of war along with rest of the young men who went to serve and never returned.

The only saving grace might be as Officer it might have been easier than being un the ranks, but at that age, I doubt if I’d be as cautious as I should be, as of all youth I’d throw caution to the wind.

But in all likelihood, I would not have been part of the aristocracy but more than likely a clerk or farm worker who might by wit and guile have survived the war, if not a little traumatized by what I had seen and done in the name of defending the Empire.

It had prompted Hemingway to use the phrase ‘the lost generation’ at the end of one of his books, but perhaps it was first used by Gertrude Stein who had said in not many words that those who survived the war were more content to drink themselves to death.

I guess if the war hadn’t taken you, and you survived the great flu epidemic that followed it, then you would probably believe you were in some way invincible.

So, in those post-war days where writers and others congregated in Paris in those mid-twenties, what some regard as the halcyon years before the great depression and later the next world war.  I suspect a lot of the American writers left because of prohibition and wanted the more liberal lifestyle in Paris during these years.

Certainly, there was a group of writers and artists who lived that bohemian lifestyle, perhaps a result of the horrors of war, using alcohol and promiscuity to drown the bad memories.

I doubt if anyone could return from a war like that and not be damaged in some way.  Perhaps the only way to escape the horror was to immerse oneself in a different world, and if I had been back in those days, I know I would be putting pencil to paper making endless notes for later use.

And I prefer to believe if I survived it was because my desire to become a writer would eventually be fulfilled.  Perhaps in the end it might be more likely because I had had a lifetime love affair with words, and to me, it would be more than enough to make a reasonable living from it.

Certainly, I would have sought out others like me as mentors and compatriots.

It was a time when the likes of F Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Edith Wharton, and James Joyce, all of whom I have no doubt would be happy to be the role models one needed.

And if you could afford to take a trip to Paris, well, enough said.

It would probably take a lot of luck to be included in their group and no doubt hanging out at the Shakespeare and Company bookshop, owned by Silvia Beach and Adrienne Monnier, might have been a step in the right direction.

But, having not been there at the time, who knows what might have happened.

Perhaps one day when someone invents the time machine, I might be able to go back and find out.

In a word: Clip

It was in the news, and seemed odd to me, that a word such as clip would have any significance beyond that of having a haircut, but apparently, it does.

Maybe they’re referring to the clip of ammunition for a gun?

But for us, a clip can be part of a haircut, letting the scissors loose.

And for those children who had a father who was a hard taskmaster, you would be familiar with a clip around the ears.  It can just as easily be used, say when a car clips another car when the driver loses control.

There’s a horse that runs at a fast clip, and can be anything for that matter that moves quickly.

It can be a spring-loaded device that holds all your papers together.  Or just about anything else for that matter.

You can clip an item from a newspaper, aptly known as a news clipping.

it can be a portion of a larger film or television programme, but to me, sometimes, when a series has a clip show, an episode where someone reminisces and we see clips from previous episodes.

And last but not least, clip the wings of those so-called high flyers at the office.

In a Word: Egg

 

This is another of those words that can be used for manly different situations.

But…

What happened to it being just an egg, you know the sort you can have for breakfast, fried, scrambled or boiled.  Or eggs Benedict.

Or…

We can go down that path where the discussion is about what came first, the chicken or the egg?  Don’t ask me, it could be both.

So, now it seems egg has a few other meanings that could be considered somewhat obscure, such as,

He is a good egg.

Wow, comparing someone to an egg?  I guess I’d hate to be compared to a rotten egg.

 

What about, the crowd egged the man on to start a fight.

Well, perhaps a couple of rowdy schoolboys looking for some action behind the shelter shed, or at least that’s what we called it when I went to school (when I’m told, dinosaurs walked the earth)

 

Then,

If you do something embarrassing, then you are said to finish up with egg on your face.

Oh dear, been there a few times.

 

Or…

If you were to put all your money into that match tree forest in Ecuador, that’s the equivalent to putting all your eggs in one basket.

In other words, when you discover that the match tree forest in Ecuador was really your financial advisor’s private bank account and he’s now living in a non-extradition country, you understand just what that expression means.

In other words, diversify.

And lastly, if the above happens to you, then it’s time to go on an expedition, to find the goose that laid the golden egg.

In a word: Fire

I have not yet had the privilege, or otherwise of being fired yet, but that meaning of the word fire is to get removed unceremoniously from your job.

Donald Trump used to use it a lot on the Apprentice, eg, “Your fired”.  And, believe it or not, I used to like that show.

But…

Fire can be quite hot, something you can sit in front of on those cold winter nights, whether it be a gas fire, or a wood fire, my preference.

Then there’s a phrase, set fire to, which can be good or bad depending on what eventually gets burned.

I have on the odd occasion had someone fire my imagination, probably a good thing being a writer.

To feel the fire of drinking neat whiskey, or in your heart driving patriotism, is something we have asked of us.

If you have a gun, then when you pull the trigger you fire it.  Just be sure not to be pointing it the wrong way or any anyone.

A good indication is when you hear the words, ready, aim, fire.  Especially if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time.

You can,

fire off a message, hopefully, a nice one

fire questions rapidly at someone (but not a politician, they have to have time to answer anything but the question asked)

or accidentally fire someone up by saying the wrong thing.

How about this for a plotline?

No matter how hard you try, how seamless, on paper the plan is, the odds are something will go wrong. That is not to say I am a fatalist, or a glass half empty kind of traveler, because most of the trips I have planned, and taken, have been relatively painless.

Except our good luck had to finally run out.

It was not a matter of bad planning; it was just one of those times when events didn’t quite go according to plan. It happens.

For instance, the simple objective was to get from Brisbane in Australia to Florence in Italy. There is no direct flight. Booking on an airline site is a horrendous experience, fares are ridiculously high, and there is no accommodating stopovers.

This is a trip that only a travel agent can handle.

The objective, travel to London via Hong Kong, or Singapore, or any medium distant airport, then on to London, or Paris, or where-ever, then to Florence. No overnight stopover, staying in a hotel, not this time, in either of Hong Kong or London.

Simple.

Not.

It was as horrendous for the agent as it was navigating the airline’s internet site. It was not something that could be done, sitting opposite her as she deftly navigated the highways and byways of the travel system on her computer. This was a longer, more intricate job.

Two days later she had the solution for the Brisbane, Hong Kong, London, and thence Florence trip. It would require a stay of 10 hours in Hong Kong, the connections didn’t align according to price constraints, and then a 14 hour layover in London as flights to Florence were not aligned either. All well and good. Cathay Pacific for the trip to London and Vueling Airlines for the Florence leg. At least we would arrive in Florence at a reasonable hour, about 6pm.

On paper, it was the most practical solution in the circumstances.

Reality proved it to be something else entirely.

At Brisbane airport, we were given boarding passes for the flights through to London, but by some quirk of fate had our baggage checked through to Florence. How this could be done without boarding passes for the London to Florence flight was a surprise. Back in Brisbane, the check-in person told us she could not give us a boarding pass for the London to Florence leg because the system would not issue it. We could she said, get it easy enough when we arrived in London.

The first leg went smoothly enough, though we did not realize until we got on the plane that it stopped over in Cairns for an hour or so. This was not a problem, just made the time between Brisbane and Hong Kong longer than we anticipated.

In Hong Kong, we had no trouble getting into the lounge I’d booked. The problem came with the interpretation of using the bathroom facilities, and it took several hours before we finally realized that the bathroom facilities were not part of the lounge but operated independently and you had to book your place. By that time there were a large number of people ahead of us (who obviously knew the problems associated with these facilities) and it annoyed me that the lounge staff did not mention it when we arrived.

The Hong Kong to London leg was as all long haul flights are. We knew what to expect, and arrived in London around 6 am. We arrived at terminal three and the lounge we’d booked was in terminal three. All we needed was a boarding pass to get in.

Oops.

That was not the case.

Because we could not get back into terminal three without a forward boarding pass we had to exit and go through customs and immigration. We were told that the only way to get a boarding pass for the Florence flight was to go to the airline counter.

The problem was Vueling did not have an airline counter.

This is where tempers started to flare. 7:30 in the morning, no means of getting into the lounge which we had paid a lot on money for, and no one in the terminal being helpful.

The Vueling web site was impossible to use.

The telephone number rang out.

At this point, I was beginning to believe the airline didn’t exist and we had been ripped off.

Only by a quirk of fate, reading the departures board, did I see a flight for Vueling leaving at 10 am, with the check-in counter displayed.

By this time we had spent two very frustrating hours and I was nothing short of angry.
At the gate, the head of the check-in counter, a representative of Vueling was surprised we had any problems, particularly in Brisbane, but happily issued the boarding passes.

When we mentioned the baggage she advised us it was lucky we did, otherwise it would have gone missing. She took the tag numbers and sorted that problem out.

The airline, it seems, is well respected, and based on the service I received, I had to say I agreed

The problem was back in Brisbane with an inexperienced check in person.

There was only one problem in getting to the lounge, now four hours later than we had advised, the fact we had to go back through customs, and in doing so, the duty-free that we had brought from Hong Kong was now outside the limits allowed, and the customs staff were adamant despite the circumstances we could not take it with us. $400 worth of goods finished up in the bin.

It would be true to say that day the customs staff at Heathrow were not the best ambassadors for their country, and one, in particular, would be best doing service elsewhere where human contact was not a requirement. As for the others, they were as helpful as they could be, but rules unfortunately were rules.

At last, rather distressed over the duty-free, and the lateness of our arrival at the lounge, there was no possibility of getting a short sleep before going to Florence. At least we did not have the same problems using the bathroom facilities, our room I’d book had them included in the room.

We rested, and figured nothing else could go wrong.

Not. Again!

The plane was advertised to leave London at about 3 pm. We left the lounge expecting to get to the gate on time. We checked on the departure board for the flight to get the gate number, only to see a notice ‘delayed’. When that delay passed 5 pm, two hours later, we decided to go to the counter and find out what was happening.

Only to find there was no airline counter. Again!

We asked at least a dozen people, including the special helpers the airport who there is plenty of signage to say to go to if you have a problem, but not one of them knew where the counter was or who was looking after the affairs of the airline. By this time other irate passengers of the delayed flight were massing, also seeking answers. One discovered who the agent was, and we descended on the counter as a large group.

The first person I saw at the counter was the woman who had checked us in that morning. For her, it had been a long day, and it was getting longer.

The problem, the plane had been delayed on an earlier leg, yes it would be arriving, having just left the lat airport, and we would be embarking about 7:30. For our trouble, we got a meal voucher, and at least we could have a reasonably good dinner.

The plane arrived, we embarked, the service was good and the people on board as cheerful as they could be given the delays and the discontented passengers.

We arrived in Florence just before midnight, our driver to take us to the hotel was waiting for us, and the hotel upgraded us to a very nice room.

All in all a harrowing journey, but at the end, basically a six-hour delay, and two very tired, but happy people. And we were in Florence, in summer. What more could anyone want?