Winter and the Fragrance of Georgie Pie

I've just realised that it is technically winter now. Time to wrap up warm, time to get out my blue coat and gloves and hat, time to-

Hang on, it's not actually that cold.

I thought I'd re-acclimatised to Auckland weather, but I still can't quite believe this is supposed to be winter. Sure, it's still early (and we did have a few cold days last week, and they had SNOW last year), but the sky is blue and I only need two layers. I remember it being faaaar colder in Sydney.

I guess I should go and see some snow at the end of the month.

In other news, the beloved Georgie Pie has returned at last. It was NZ's own fast food restaurant (with BALL PITS, as my bro keeps reminding me) until it was taken over by McDonalds and closed down in the mid-nineties. After a lengthy Bring Back Georgie Pie movement and Facebook group, McDonalds are testing bringing back the pies in selected restaurants, starting with the steak mince and cheese flavour (yes, MEAT pies).

Bro suggested a mission to obtain one of these long-lost pies on the opening day, so we sat in afternoon traffic, found a park and joined the line (which had been much longer when they first opened that morning, apparently). As soon as I smelled that special pie smell, I was taken back to eight years old, giving my order for a small mince pie and a latticed apple and blackberry.

It's funny how easily smells can trigger memories and the feel of a place or time. What if you could capture those scents in bottles and have a library of them, labelled according to time and date, and you could transport yourself back just by smelling one? Transport metaphorically, of course, within memories.

Hmm. Or literally. I can see that turning into a very strange story.

The pie was good, in any case.

Auckland Writers and Readers Festival

...and on that Friday, the heavens opened and the rain fell in great fat splotches and ran in rivers through the streets, and umbrellas were nothing against the onslaught, and Kathmandu jackets were soaked and clingy and hair plastered wetly against the face...

The rain wasn't quite that bad, but it was definitely a relief to get inside and walk around the Aotea Centre in the dry. My Friend Who Rocks and I decided to go early and see Words Out Loud (mostly because we wanted to be sure of getting a seat for the following YA writers reading event), but really enjoyed the poets performing their visceral, thought-provoking works. There's something incredibly engaging about the spoken word, and ideas coming straight for you from the mouths of passionate speakers (Courtney Meredith, Miles Merrill, Ken Arkind and Carrie Rudzinski).

After we'd been blown away by poetry, we were treated to readings by Paula Morris, Kate de Goldi, Libba Bray and Patrick Ness. Paula Morris read some very creepy scenes from her ghost books Ruined and Dark Souls, set in New Orleans and York. Kate de Goldi read a few passages from her ACB of Honora Lee and had everyone giggling, and then Libba Bray demonstrated her amazing ability at accents and voices with Beauty Queens. Lastly, Patrick Ness read the first chapter or two of a very new book that didn't even have proofs yet, and left everyone hanging, knowing we can't find out what will happen until the book's published.

And then it was back out into the rain, which was more drippy than pouring by then.

Flying

Most importantly, there are sparkly stars in the roof of the plane that they turn on when it's dark.

I'm flying over Brisbane at the moment, on the fourth of my five flights home. The first three were around seven hours each, and this one's only 3, which seems incredibly short. Soon I'll be in NZ again, 21 months after I left!

My timetabling didn't hold up that well (I planned everything out to minimise jetlag. I hope) because there were more movies than I expected, and of course timetabling sleep doesn't often work. I had a cold shower at Brisbane airport and a nap on their nice couches, but I feel I will be in need of caffeine at some point.

My last few days in the UK were full of packing and going to see people. I returned to Stafford, and this time had a lovely dinner at an old pub and visited the High House, a four storey half-timbered building from the 1590’s that stands in the middle of town. The rooms are done up in styles to match different ages, one room with a beautiful four-poster bed and replica hangings and another as an Edwardian shop. The floor made me feel I was on a boat, it was so wavy. It snowed while I was there, too, my last blast of winter until I meet it again midyear in New Zealand...

It's always strange leaving somewhere. Even if you come back, it'll never be quite the same as it was. I said goodbye to people and house and garden and road and park and railway station, pulled into London Bridge, said goodbye to the Shard, got my ticket for my luckily-late-departing train and arrived in plenty of time for my flight at Gatwick. I poured most of the one and two penny coins I've collected into the charity boxes and boarded my flight to Dubai.

I looked out for the Burj Khalifa (world's tallest building, at nearly a kilometre high) as we came into Dubai, and I think I might have seen its lights in the darkness of the front camera. Too dark to see much of anything else, though. The flight was late and I was worried I might miss my connection, but there was time enough to wander some of the airport and get to my Singapore flight on time. The terminal I was in has soaring great triangular windows in the curving walls, and an unbelievable number of people at two o'clock in the morning.

At Singapore we had to get off and wait while they cleaned the plane, go through security again and reboard for Brisbane. I'm getting sick of taking off my belt and extracting my electronic devices from my backpack, but there's only once more!

I should probably be grabbing some sleep. But there are so many movies to watch...

 

Losing things on the Underground and general breaking of other things

Would you like to know what happens if you drop something down the gap between the train and the platform in an Underground station? I shall tell you.

Luckily it was not me who dropped something (though I almost did once), but I got onto the platform just as a train was leaving. I sighed and stopped hop-skipping (my foot, although castless, is still sore), then noticed as the train pulled away that there were more Transport for London (tfl) employees on the platform than normal. One of them was standing right on the platform edge, feet either side of the yellow line, and pointing a red torch down the tunnel.

We waited for the next train. As it came around the corner of the tunnel, it slowed down and stopped just where the tfl woman was standing with her red torch. The driver came out of his driver cabin to see what was happening. Another tfl employee with one of those long grabber things reached down into the trench beside the platform and retrieved a man's phone, and then the torch lady turned her torch to green, the driver went back to drive the train, and everything went back to normal.

Now I kind of want to drop something down there to see it all again. I won't though, I promise.

Speaking of dropping things, a very sad thing happened to my iPad last Wednesday. It slid off a table and I caught it on my feet, but then it slid off my feet and onto the floor. It only dropped about ten centimetres onto a hard surface (my feet are not that hard) and I thought it would be fine, but apparently Gorilla Glass is not as durable as one might think. A spider of cracks is all along one corner, which I stupidly poked at to brush the glass off and got a splinter in my finger.

I checked my bag to see if I had any sellotape to cover it with until I could get it to an Apple shop and see what could be done with it, but no luck. I was having dinner before a meetup, so thought I'd ask the cafe if they had some. They didn't. They did have a first-aid kit, however, so now I have a big sticking plaster across one corner. Very anthropomorphic.

Unfortunately they can't very easily replace screens on iPad 2s (something to do with the screen being attached with glue) so you have to get a replacement iPad which is rather a lot of money. So for the moment I'm keeping with my sticking plaster solution.

I thought about nail-polish, though most internet people say it's not a good idea, what with the primary liquid stage of nail-polish and the electronics etc. etc. Then I started thinking about exactly which colour might look the best, and whether it should be sparkly.

I may have to restrain myself...

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Spending Vast Sums of Money (2) and NaNoWriMo

I've just got my tickets to New Zealand. I spent about four hours staring at different websites, ringing different travel agents to get them to explain their terms and conditions and then telling them that, no, I didn't want to book over the phone (I'm paranoid they'll spell my name wrong and tick aisle seat instead of window seat, and then I'll have to change EVERYTHING and these things are costly to change) but at last I clicked the final button and took the plunge and poured lots of money into the mouth of the travel beast.

It is stressful clicking that last button. Double checking dates and times (what if I've booked for 2014? What THEN? Oh, you mean you can only book a year in advance? Okay, then. But what if it's SEPTEMBER not February?), card numbers, spelling of names (obviously I might have spelled my name wrong. Or given a different name. Or just put 'Name' instead of my actual name. I did that once), trusting that this is a reputable website and most of the reviews I've spent the last hour trawling are okay, or at least acceptable. And then screen-printing pages in two different ways to prove I've seen the confirmation and can brandish it in people's faces if anyone dares to suggest otherwise.

I'm not paranoid, am I?

Thirty-six hours each way. It doesn't matter when you leave or when you arrive, because time doesn't really have a meaning anymore. You're not on London time, and you're not yet on NZ time. It's a long grey limbo of the body-clock.

I suppose it does kind of matter when I arrive for people who want to meet me at the airport. They're nice arrivals times, don't worry.

My plan for today was to get all my NaNoWriMo done by midday, which of course didn't happen. I was a bit behind until yesterday, but I caught up and am back on track. I'm not using Scrivener, because I found out that, if your computer crashes, the Scrivener index file corrupts and you can't use it anymore. I decided that, with my usual inability to turn my laptop off for weeks, it wasn't worth the possibility that all my extra notes and pretty structure would become unusable if the computer crashed. So I'm back to MS Word, which is kind of strange after so long using Scrivener.

Writing so much and rationing my time is strange. Normally, I must read over what I've written quite often, because I'm not really doing that now and I feel like I'm writing blind. This is funny, considering that this time I have actually done a bit of planning and I know where the story is going, whereas last time I did NaNoWriMo I had absolutely no idea. I'm enjoying it though, and getting to know characters that I hadn't realised were so interesting. I think I may have built some rather large plot holes into my plot, however, so there's a bit of work needed to fill them in.

Have a good week!

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Nanowrimo and the Broken Foot

The longer I'm on crutches, the grouchier I become. Latest in my tale of woe is the closing of my bus stop - apparently they feel the need to do road works, and this for some reason affects the ability of my bus to stop at the proper place. Ha! Why couldn't they wait until my foot was healed? And the buses do not stop elsewhere along the road, even when I'm late and there's no way I could ever run with crutches without taking a skidding tumble down the hill in a tangle of broken limbs. I'll have bones poking out of me soon.

I am also imagineering (can I borrow that word? I'm pretty sure it's copyrighted. Hmm. Thanks, Disney) a dumb-waiter that could ferry plates, groceries and cups of tea between the kitchen and my room. It would be nice if it could also ferry me. Or maybe some kind of Great Glass Elevator, which could also save on plane fares (thought: is the Great Glass Elevator pressurised? How fast does it travel? Would you have to go through customs, and if so you'd probably have to land near an airport, and if so do you have to worry about air traffic control?)

In other news, I've decided to do Nanowrimo this year. For those who don't know, this involves writing 50,000 words in 30 days, and this year over 300,000 people are doing it in the month of November. I did it three years ago and was amazed at how I could go from absolutely nothing (I had a last-minute change of idea, which meant that my pre-November planning consisted of about half an hour on the evening of October 31st) to an almost-complete first draft. Things just seem to click sometimes as you're writing and plotting, and a story comes through when a month before there was nothing.

This time, I'm going to try planning, and hopefully I won't have to change my idea at the last minute like last time. My commute takes an hour and a half each way at the moment, so I should have a reasonable amount of time to get my 1667 words done each day. I'm still not quite sure about my ending, but i'm confident it'll sort itself out. Eventually. I'm quite excited to get into the writing and see what will happen.

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Two decades of Number One Singles. And a broken foot.

Update on the foot: I have a new shoe thingy that's supposed to take pressure off my toe but I don't think it does. My other foot and knee are feeling the pressure, as well as my hands. Two weeks on crutches is not advisable, for those of you who were thinking you might try it. Four weeks to go, I guess...

I mentioned last week that I'd worked my way through all the number one singles since the year I was born. It was an educational experience. In the first few years, I didn't recognise too many of the songs, and was somewhat horrified by a few (there was actually a number one that included rap and yodelling). I made rules: I was not allowed to skip any if they were terrible, but if I couldn't find a particular song I could listen to a different version or skip it. If a song came up twice, i only had to listen to it once (this was especially good with things like Crazy Frog).

It was interesting to slowly move through the years and come to a point at which I began to recognise a lot of the songs, or be able to link them to a certain event in my life - a dance concert, a school disco, playing cassettes in the car. Music is very good at capturing the feeling of a particular time, and listening was like taking a journey through my life.

I was surprised at how some songs hadn't dated at all, and how others were so clearly from a particular era (eighties/early nineties) that it made me cringe. I found one song that I really like except for one repeated line in the chorus, which marks it as a product of the early nineties. They should rerelease it, without that bit. Am I conditioned to dislike songs that came out before I was properly listening to music, or is the music just bad? I'm not sure.

Closer to the present day, I found myself astonished at how many years had passed since a particular song was number one. Time should not move so quickly. You could also see the rise of particular types of music, and I enjoyed things like listening to Cher's first artistic use of auto tune, and then hearing all the number one songs that have used it in the last ten years.

Some of the music was bad, as number ones sometimes seem to be. Some of it was pretty good. The whole thing took me about a week and a half, and I'm not sure I'd do it again, but it was a good experience. Maybe I'll go through all the number two singles that weren't number ones next, though that might be harder to figure out.

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Broken legs in London

I have done many interesting things in the past few weeks. I have catsit, I have listened to all the number one singles from my birth until the present day, I have put up some more photos of my trip to Turkey and also a few more, I have been to see Stomp, and I have broken my foot (I know, I misled you in the title. But the alliteration!!)

This last one happened about a week ago, and involved a moss-green wing armchair viciously kicking my foot. The altercation also involved my flatmate (who I was teasing) and an intended inside hook kick, but it was mostly the chair's fault.

I spent four hours in the A&E the next day, got an X-ray and confirmed that my foot was indeed broken. The doctor seemed quite excited and pronounced it a 'beautiful fracture' (hey, that could be the name of a song). I made my way home and collapsed on my bed for the next two days, moaning about my sore arm muscles (crutches take a lot out of you...) and bruised hands (crutches again. The foot was fine).

I'm back at work again this week, taking a different route on my commute that minimises the amount of walking. I go past large houses that I'm sure are terminator Transformers in disguise, with their Mohawk of chimney pots and chimney pot guns at either side, blank window eyes staring out over the heath. I plead with bus drivers to let me off fifty metres before the actual bus stop, crutch my way over cobble stones and onto the train platform. I work out the shortest distances to everywhere, and walk boldly through a pub to get to my bus stop. Before today, I hadn't used the Underground in more than a week.

People smile at you when you're on crutches, and talk to you and offer to carry things. You get to use the disabled seats on public transport without feeling guilty. I've been getting quite good at my crutches (my arms are stronger now) and I've figured out the fastest technique is to crutch forward, then hop, then crutch forward again. Even without the hop (which I only use on special occasions, like when my bus is almost at the bus stop) I'm already fast enough to get annoyed at the pace of tourists in central London. I dislike moving slowly.

I went on my first escalator today. I didn't realise how difficult it would be until I actually stood in front of it and stared at the steps sliding out, out, out, out and considered where I would put my crutches, when I would hop and how to keep my crutches and hold on to the handrail. It was like being a three year old again, and trying out your very, very first escalator. Getting off was much easier. Hopefully things will improve with practice, and I won't be on crutches too much longer... I will restrict my use of escalators, though.

 

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The Strange World of No Internet or Underground

It was a very weird weekend. About half the Underground lines were down (all right, all right, I exaggerate) and the entirety of SE7 had no Internet service, if they were with a certain provider. (Quick note on postcodes: in London if someone asks where you live, you may give them a tube station or a postcode region. People generally know London postcodes, and it's generally quite easy to guess N is north, SE southeast if you don't know). I woke up on Saturday morning to a different world. What was I to do with my weekend? I had big plans for internet research. I would have to go and find wifi. I would have to use the buses.

I hadn't expected the buses to be quite so horrific. I guess on a normal weekend it may not be so bad, but with everyone using their cars because there were no tubes, there were insane traffic jams. I got the impression that my destination, the library, was at least fifteen miles away, even crawling at a snail's pace through traffic. I could probably have reached France faster. But finally, I arrived!

And the library had no internet either.

Sunday was about the same, so I didn't manage to get much done that I had planned. I did, however, write three thousand words that I probably would not have written had the Internet been live, more than I've written in one day in months. The world feels different when there's no Internet - cut off, peaceful maybe. Your world is here, now. Immediate. Even if you're reading a book. And having no Underground makes everything much smaller - your choices for days out are limited, unless you commit to public transport combat strategies and at least two hours to get to your destination.

Despite everything, I think I kind of enjoyed the weekend. It was different, anyway.

 

Update: we had an entire WEEK of no Internet. I am going slightly crazy now I have it back. Shrieks of glee etc. etc.

 

Edinburgh Day 4: Walking Tour, Censorship, Beatboxing and Ghosts

(I am writing this in The Elephant House! You know, the JK Rowling cafe! And feeling slightly self-conscious, writing... Out the window you can see the castle on its cliffs and a graveyard and an old school. Hmmm...)

I never really understand what happens to the morning. I wander around, and then suddenly it's time to go to something and it's nearly the afternoon. Yesterday I went to look at the Half Price Hut, where you get Fringe tickets for half-price, got myself a thick magazine book with 375 pages that lists all the Fringe shows (there are that many), and went up to the Royal Mile for a walking tour at 11am.

The walking tour was pretty good, going around a few closes on the Mile and explaining such things as punishment for small crimes in the middle ages (nailing your ear to a post), gardyloo (watch out, there's nasty stuff a-coming out the window) and the national animal of Scotland (a unicorn. No one mentioned you were allowed mythical creatures!). Some of these stories I'd heard before, but it was much more real when you could look up at the windows and stare at the ear-post and think that's where they did that.

We also walked through Greyfriar's Graveyard with the memorial to Greyfriar's Bobby (little dog who never left his master's side) and heard about the names on gravestones that appear in Harry Potter. I went back later and found McGonnagal, Black and Thomas Riddell, but couldn't find Crookshanks.

At 3pm I had a talk about censorship at the Book Festival. It was incredibly interesting, with Chika Unigwe as the chair and Patrick Ness as the keynote speaker talking about how, today in a Western society, we more often self-censor than are externally censored. He put this down to fear of consequences and offending people, but also talked about freedom of speech and the courage to say something that might offend someone, but that needs to be said.

Then the floor was opened up to discussion from the audience, at least half of whom were authors at the Edinburgh Writer's Conference. People kept standing up and introducing themselves as China Miéville or Melvin Burgess (well, only those two did. No impersonators) and saying what they thought. It was a bit disjointed at times, with so many people wanting to air their views and not really reply to the previous question, but I think the general idea that came out of it was that people have the right not to be punished for saying stuff, but that everyone should always be arguing about what you should say. Another interesting point was that the backlash against political-correctness is often a way for prejudice and 'repugnant' views to sneak back in.

I hadn't realised that the event would last two hours, so by the time it was finished I had fifteen minutes to get right across town. Google told me it would take twenty-four minutes. I ran all the way, round the bottom of the castle cliffs and up along to my first Fringe show: the Vocal Orchestra.

I was a bit late, but they let me in anyway. The Vocal Orchestra are beatboxers and singers - beatboxing is where you make noises into a microphone that sound like music or drums (for those who've never come across it). If it's really good, it can sound almost exactly the same as the original music, but it's all done with voice.

The Vocal Orchestra are really good.

Among other things, they did Teardrop by Massive Attack, got stuck in a time machine and came out in 1723 (Vivaldi), had duels both musical and physical, and used the audience as an instrument (we had to sing notes according to our section). It was great.

I stopped back at the hostel to drop my bag off, and went to meet the ghost tour on the Royal Mile. We heard about the curse of the North Bridge, went up to Calton Hill where witches meet in front of the unfinished Parthenon, wandered through a graveyard with a very scary headstone (weathered to look like someone screaming) and took lots of photos to examine for supernatural apparitions. I got lots of 'orbs', but that was most likely dust caught by the flash. It's amazing how wandering around a graveyard in the dark can make you jump at everything.

 

Margaret Mahy, the Olympic Torch and Horsies

This will be a double-topic post, catching up from the one I meant to do in the weekend but never really got around to.

I was very sad to hear of Margaret Mahy's death earlier in the week. My copy of A Lion in the Meadow has a very good picture of a lion drawn in by the lady herself, and I remember standing before the Wellington Library steps as a small child, entranced by her rainbow wig as she read aloud. I loved her picture books, especially Seventeen Kings and Forty-Two Elephants, and her books for older readers of which my favourite is Alchemy.

I keep hearing about how much people love The Changeover, and wondering whether I've read it or not - I thought I had, but maybe not. I must investigate further. I think I might have to have a go at reading all her books... And watching Maddigan's Quest and Kaitangata Twitch, which I never managed to catch for some reason. She will be missed! If you've never read any Margaret Mahy, go and find some now. It should be pretty easy in New Zealand, but you might have to search a bit elsewhere. She was incredibly prolific, so there should be something for everyone :)

Last Saturday saw the Olympic Torch relay come near me, so I woke up early and stared at the live video of the torch making its way through Greenwich, aghast at all the people who'd got up before seven on a Saturday to see it go past. Their commitment inspired me in the end and I dragged myself out of bed and out the door.

I wasn't quite sure where to go to see the torch, so I just ended up walking until I found the route and then walking a bit further until it seemed like I had a good spot. There weren't too many people at first, but there were quite a few kids waving torches they'd made themselves and lots of police stationed or coming past. My spot was right outside the entrance to the Royal Artillery Barracks, and I didn't realise how good this was until the horses appeared.

Horses! A huge procession of them, pulling carts with guns on them! Horsies with guns! And soldiers all dressed up in red uniforms! The procession strung out along the yard and the horses stamped and fidgeted a bit as we waited in the early morning sun for the torch.

First past were the sponsors, singing and dancing and giving out free drums and the smallest coke bottles I've ever seen (250mL). That was amusing, and I tried to decide how I feel about sponsorship. On the one hand, I think it's slightly evil that these huge conglomerates get to brainwash people all along the way, but on the other hand, they're running a business and they are making the Olympics happen, and I appreciate that. After the sponsors came the traffic jam of normal people who were just trying to get around on a Saturday morning. After that was a bit more security, and then the runner with the flame and his bodyguards!

Everyone cheered and waved flags and snapped away with cameras, and then ran to follow as he went past. There was a changeover right outside the Royal Artillery gates, with lots of good photo opportunities while they passed the flame from one torch to the next. The torches are very sparkly.

The next runner set off, and the Horsies with guns followed dutifully behind, along with about half the people who'd been watching (including me). It was a great atmosphere, and I can't wait for the opening ceremony which I'm sure will be even better.

Gridlock London, Spider-man and Comic Books

I know, I know, I haven't done a blog post in a while now. I have been trying to figure out the best way to get to work when they close half of a major tunnel for the Olympics and it backs up the traffic so that my bus takes twice as long to get to the tube station. The transport for London people were kind of helpful - they've supplied us with walking maps of the area - but even with the traffic I think walking would take longer than the bus. I could take the train and change to the tube at London Bridge, but London Bridge is pretty much my most hated train station and they've made it even worse at the moment by closing off the direct route from train to tube. Now you have to go out onto the street, around, and back into the station if you want to get on the Underground.

Ha. Rant over.

Another reason I may not have posted recently is that I have been watching Spider-man. I really like this movie. I have seen it in 3D, 3D-moving seats, and er, twice in 2D. It's free, okay?

I get like this with some things. You may remember my Merlin posts from last year. So I've been trying to figure out what I like about it. Secret identity? Check. Good acting? Check. Minimal plot holes? I think I've found them all now, and they don't bother me too much. I prefer the oh-we-can't-be-together ending in this version much more than the Tobey Maguire ending, which I thought was a bit unbelievable and faintly annoying (oh, I love you so much I'm going to stay away from you out of the amazing moral awesomeness of my heart. Come on. It's cliché). I also liked that Peter Parker wasn't that stereotypical geeky guy who always gets picked on - the character development was great. You can really see that pre-spider bite Peter could become Spider-man.

My slight obsession with the movie got me thinking about comic books, and why I love comic-book style stories but not comic books. Or manga or graphic novels. I feel I should like them. I like art, and I like stories. Graphic novels have both. So why can't I get into them?

Maybe it's because I feel I have to study the pictures in depth and really appreciate them and so I never get into the flow of things. Maybe I miss the description of books, and my brain isn't satisfied with pictures (though I did love the Hugo Cabret book, which is half in words and half in pictures). Whatever the reason, my brain just doesn't click with them. It's the same with video games. I like driving games and the flying bits in Spyro and Harry Potter, but anything else and I get bored.

I guess lots of people can't get into books the same way I can't get into graphic novels.

Oh, and by the way, if you can get to watch Spider-man with moving seats, do it. It's awesome. I thought it would be a bit distracting, but I missed it when I watched it again without the seats. I kept expecting to feel the explosions or rock back when Spider-man's swinging, and was disappointed when it didn't happen.

Is there a particular medium you get bored with?

 

A week of books and movies

Hello all! I thought you might like a bit of time to read all the Turkey posts, but I'm back now! I've been having an entertainment-filled week, so I will report on that.

First, Rock of Ages. I went in with low expectations due to reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, but it was amazing. I felt like dancing out of my seat but thought it might annoy the people behind me, and also considered hands-above-the-head clapping, but dismissed it for the same reason. My flatmates also liked it, and we shared our guilt over the fact that none of us have been to the stage show, which is probably better and has been showing in the West End for a while (this is a common conversation, also undertaken after seeing War Horse and Mamma Mia). The story of Rock of Ages was perhaps a little well-worn, but it's a feel-good musical, people, and the songs were pretty awesome. And the dancing. Especially loved the Alec Baldwin/Russell Brand duet.

Next up was Snow White and the Huntsman, which I enjoyed though found myself distracted by outside thoughts every so often and had to remind myself to focus-on-movie. It's a very pretty movie, though I thought the Snow-White-as-chosen-one thing was a bit random. Was this because she's not so much a chosen one in the original story, or some other reason? Do I just have a thing against chosen ones? I like Harry Potter and Luke Skywalker. Is it a boy/girl thing? I hope not. I get the feeling the chosen-one stuff was weighted more towards the end and not introduced properly, though that might just be because I didn't notice it towards the beginning. Anyway, I didn't mind too much, and enjoyed the motion-master effects of the seats in front of me, especially the explosions (they have motion-master seats in my local theatre!).

Final movie of the weekend was Men in Black 3, which I loved. They have so many little by-the-by jokes in their world building so you're laughing much of the way through, and then there's a twist at the end that I thought was really well-done but won't say anything about. Definitely recommended.

And in books! I finished Garth Nix's A Confusion of Princes, which was hilarious and addictive. I loved the voice of the main character, and the fact that the MC is already guaranteed (and feels entitled to) an extraordinary destiny rather than the normal-character-finding-extraordinary-destiny trope that you see a lot.

I think I am using too-many-dashes.

Moving on to the next book (yes I have seen/read this many things this week. I am catching up on my entertainment): Maureen Johnson's The Name of the Star. This is a Jack the Ripper ghost story set in modern London, and seriously freaked me out, especially as the next door neighbour has recently started making loud banging noises in his back garden at 11 o'clock at night which may or may not be the sound of bodies being dismembered. I really enjoy reading books set in London while in London, because sometimes you know the places you're being shown and get a little thrill of recognition (this happened with the last Cassandra Clare Infernal Devices book too - she describes an alley that I walk down almost weekly!). Anyway, The Name of the Star has lots of awesome things to recommend it: ghosts, London, murder investigations, evaluation/criticism of the media, boarding school, brave heroine, secret lives, disguise, the Tube... So, yes, it's good. Go read it :-)

Have a good week!

Mooovies

Still summer here. We have a four day weekend coming up, though, so rain and cold is pretty much guaranteed.

I took advantage of my unlimited movie card last week and saw two movies in two days: Beauty and the Beast in 3D (for the second time) and The Raid. I spent most of Beauty and The Beast marvelling at its genius and trying to figure out what makes it so good (love the prologue with the stained glass, love the first scene with Belle walking through the village and everyone singing, love the music and the lyrics, nice segue to introduction of Belle's father, great explosions... I wonder how far through the movie I can get?). Beauty and the Beast was the first film I ever saw at the cinema, and I still remember sitting there in the dark and staring up at the gigantic screen, feet dangling and worrying intermittently about being eaten by the fold-down seats. I had a colouring book, too, with Belle and Beast in the snow with the little birdies. Belle may also have been my model for book-reading habits, with her ability to wander through a crowded market while reading a book without crashing into anything.

And the ending! All sparkles and happy people, though I've always liked the furniture versions of the servants more than the human versions. I also faintly object to the platinum-blondness of the Prince. Why do fairytale princes have to have long, flowing blonde locks? Still, good movie.

I was expecting The Raid to be in English, but it's in Indonesian with subtitles (Brother Ecl says he thought the main characters were going to be bad guys because they weren't speaking English. Sad but true commentary on Hollywood movies). I don't mind subtitles (in fact I think it's better to hear the original words) but was a bit worried I'd miss some of the action because I'd be reading the subtitles. No chance of that - there wasn't that much dialogue. There was lots and lots of action, though, and for some reason it was all easy to follow. Normally I glaze over a bit when fights last long than a minute, but there was something about The Raid that meant you were glued to the screen all the way through.

We were a bit late, so never got introduced to the main character. This meant I wasn't sure who was the main character until right at the end, when he was pretty much the only one left. I quite liked it that way, because it kept it surprising. Normally you know the main character will live to the end, but if you don't know who the main character is anyone might be next. I wonder if this would work in a book? Hmm. Maybe a short story.

Enjoyed any good movies recently?

A Year in the UK and meeting authors (squee!)

Today is the one-year anniversary of my arrival in the UK. It's kind of scary to think about. Time goes past so fast.

In the last year I have learnt to ride the underground like a natural-born Londoner (hmm. As I write that, I am reminded of two occasions in the past week when I stood on toes because I wasn't holding on. I had to turn my page! It was necessary! And the train braked at just the wrong time). I've decided that the most important things to do on the Underground are to keep moving (even if you go in the wrong direction. Turning on the spot is much better than standing still) and to memorise the best doors for each station.

I've learnt to carry an umbrella with me wherever I go. I've learnt to dress in proper layers, with a coat and everything. I've shopped in huge stores and caught trains to different countries and tackled the banking system. I've been to Germany and France and Wales and Northern Ireland (and will be going to Turkey soon! Stay tuned!). I've had a proper English Christmas dinner and snow and seen squirrels. Lots and lots of squirrels.

I've witnessed the preparations for the Queen's Jubilee (something faintly scary about the union jack EVERYWHERE. And apparently we will have bunting for our jubilee party next weekend. BUNTING). I've seen the changing of the guard. I've been stuck multiple times on the Underground and taken the slow roller coaster that is the DLR. I've been to a reception at Parliament and stood on either side of the Greenwich Mean Line and watched Shakespeare in the Globe Theatre. I have got tickets to the Olympics and the Paralympics.

And this week I have had a barbecue in the back garden and discussed the possibility of there being a WWII bomb shelter under the patio and watched Eurovision (interesting. Veeeerrry interesting). And yesterday I went to see Cassandra Clare and Maureen Johnson in Stratford, which was hilarious and involved discussions of cannibal ducks and kittens and putting your friends into your books. Sarah Rees Brennan was also there and I managed to get books signed by all of them. I also managed not gush too much when SRB said she liked my necklace (she likes my necklace! She does!), or tell her how I was once four hours late to work because I had to finish her book...

It's nice meeting authors. You can be sure they're real people, and not just internet/publishing industry secret conspiracy inventions.

Writing synopses (and pretty bunnies)

First, an update on the weather. We had about an hour of extreme sun on Tuesday! I.e. the sun shone in a steady beam unhampered by clouds. Following this, we had a bit of extreme rain, then some extreme hail and some extreme thunder and lightning. Interesting day for weather.

In other news, I have been writing a synopsis. I followed some advice given by Nicola Morgan (she has an excellent writing blog, by the way, and also writes very good books) and left all my notes at home with my laptop and iPad and sat in town (45min away, or that particular day, 2 hours of defective tube train away) with nothing but a blank sheet of paper and a pen.

The idea here is that you write what you can remember of your story, and hopefully these will be the most important bits. You don't get hung up on trying to condense each chapter into fifty-seven words, and you get into the flow of writing rather than thinking about how to fit everything in.

It was an interesting experience. I write so much on my laptop or my iPad that it took me a bit to get back into writing by hand. Once over the initial hurdle, though, I got right down to it and got some good stuff out (I think).

I did notice an interesting thing while I was doing it. My procrastination was a lot more noticeable. When you're on a connected device, it's very easy to convince yourself that Wikipedia research is very necessary and needed right at this moment, so you don't really notice that you are procrastinating. When it's only you, a pen and a piece of paper, though, the difference between work and not-work is much easier to define. At one point I found myself staring at my pen and thinking 'ooh, pretty bunnies', which I immediately knew was not work (it was a new pen. With bunnies on it).

I guess it's good to switch modes of writing every so often, to give yourself a change and see if anything new and more productive comes out of it. I know I wouldn't have done as much if I'd been on my laptop. I would have been too busy checking things and changing things and believing it was all work.

London: They're not lying about the weather.

Today I am complaining about a subject dear to any English-person's heart: the weather. (Do people complains about the weather in places where the weather doesn't really change? What else do they talk about to fill in the gaps in conversation? Or are they just better conversationalists all round? I feel there is an academic paper somewhere in there.)

I was woken yesterday morning by the dawn chorus, which is quite nice at around eight a.m. on a Saturday morning. But not at four a.m. Yes, it is now light at around four in the morning (I may be slightly off here - I groaned and squinted at my watch, and the hour number was a four. I can't remember what the other numbers were).

I associate long days with warm weather, somewhat understandably I think. This does not seem to be the case in London, where we had a few very nice days some time last month when the days were nowhere near as long, but we're now back to wearing coats. Of course, last weekend was a bank holiday weekend (I spent a few days relaxing in Ipswich, which was very nice) so that may have affected the weather. It can't be sunny on a bank holiday.

We're supposed to be conserving water, too, because the last two years have been the driest since the seventies. That didn't stop April from being the wettest April on record. I did kind of enjoy the change from eternally-overcast days, though. New Zealand weather seems to be more extreme than London weather, so I relished splashing through the flood puddles (ah, home!), but where is the extreme sun to go with the extreme rain?

Take that as a challenge, weather.

Chess piece characters

It's Wednesday! So I'm getting back into writing Wednesdays.

I've been thinking about character and plot, and how sometimes they can work at cross-purposes. You want your plot to move in a certain direction, but if you force your characters to conform to the plot the story isn't believable. It's like your story is a chess board, and you're picking up your pieces and plonking them where you want them to go. It suits the larger gameplay, but your characters should not act like chess pieces. At least, not like normal chess pieces.

Sometimes you just need to give a few nudges in the right direction. Figure out why they might act the way you want them to, and slip in some details to smooth the transitions. You don't want a reader questioning reactions or motivations, or being jarred out of the story.

Other times you need to do a bit more work. You've plonked your character in a square they'd never normally go near, so maybe you need to think a few moves ahead. Figure out what story beats you want to hit (what squares you absolutely have to get to) and let the character guide themselves to the square. You might not need the squares you were trying to force them into.

You want walking, talking chess pieces that move themselves across the board, rather than doing exactly what they're told.

iPad again: keyboards

Continuing on from my last iPad post...

First off I got ia writer, which syncs with Dropbox, and opened it to find... Arrow keys! I think I actually screamed. I had resigned myself to no arrow keys, and then there they were! And on top of that, a dedicated apostrophe button! Awesome.

So I tried it out, taking my iPad out into the big wide world and writing a small chunk of story. Great! Very happy! Then I wanted to make some notes in another document, so I opened one and did a few notes, then tried to get back to my main work. Catastrophe! I'd been working in a Dropbox file, and because I was offline and had closed it down by opening the new document, I could no longer access it. So what happened to the work I did on it? I guess next time I'll work on a local file....

As long as I work locally or on iCloud, everything goes fine. So I have been doing that, until I figure out the Dropbox thing...

Typing on the iPad is actually not as hard as you think, and you can just about touch-type. Ia writer has the best keyboard layout, but you can only use it when you're actually in the app so it doesn't help for typing web addresses or using Blogsy (as I am now). So I've had to get my fingers to memorise two different types of iPad keyboard layout, on top of the three physical keyboard layouts I've trained them for (UK, US and French. Very useful for writing French essays). And sometimes I get confused, jabbing at buttons that aren't there.

A touch keyboard does mean you hit bad keys much more than you would on a normal keyboard, but the spell check for the most part does a reasonable job of correcting things (until it doesn't, and you have to go back without using arrow keys and fix it...).

My biggest problem at the moment is not hitting the space bar, but hopefully that will fix itself in time.

My new iPad. Kind of.

I am writing this on my new iPad! Well, it's an iPad 2, so I'm not sure if i can say 'new iPad', but still, I got it last week and have been experimenting on it.

I'm having fun attempting to play the piano (not particularly possible with the app I have) and drawing right on the screen. I've always wished I could have a backspace button on actual pen-and-paper drawing, and now it's almost like I do. The app I have doesn't colour in exactly like coloured pencils, though, so I've got to figure out a way to get the effects I want without layering the same as I would with real pencils.

But... Writing! I was quite excited to start syncing my iPad with Scrivener, so I set myself up with Dropbox and a text editor, went into Scrivener, looked for the sync button and... It's not there!!!!! I have the Windows version, which doesn't have syncing yet, so I have to find another way to do things until they update it.

In the meantime, I've been trying to find out all the little secrets that help you type quickly on an iPad screen, and realising how much I rely on some things that do not exist on a virtual keyboard. Good tip: pressing and holding the comma will give you an apostrophe, or, even better, swiping up on the comma will do the same thing. Most other things I can work around (though I find I keep pressing the space bar by mistake), but I soon realised an important set of buttons that are missing. The arrow keys.

Where be-eth my arrow keys? I searched online and found a few forums with people arguing for and against arrow keys (why do you need them on a touch-based system, people argue), but I would really, really like some arrow keys. It's annoying to have to zoom in and out when you want to move the cursor one or two letters, especially when the autocorrect has done something stupid and you want to fix just one letter. I've since found that if you touch and hold, a little magnifying glass appears and you can move the cursor easier, but I still would like my arrow keys. Fingers are too big to move the cursor quickly. Apple should add some arrow keys.

Ooh! Or maybe they could ship tiny pet fairies with the device, and you could get the fairies to move the cursor. I think if Apple could do that, I would be happy.