Back From The Void

Yes, right, hmm, here I am, back from the lavender-scented wormhole in which I've been lounging for the past, hm, three weeks (crikey).

During my blogworld absence some, none or all of the following may or may not have occurred:

1. I made the lovely Mr BC drive to Somerset in a very large van in the pouring rain to pick up a sofa that is the identical twin of my existing wipe-clean cherry-red sofa that was once a recurring leitmotif in this very blog.

2. I accused South West Water of appropriating THREE HUNDRED AND THIRTY SEVEN POUNDS of my own money, and then pretending they didn't have it. A response has yet to be forthcoming.

3. In a partially inebriated state, the lovely Mr BC mistook a sculpture made of mussel shells for a tasty cake.

4. Flies got in.

5. I went to the launch of the lovely Miss-Cellany's new book, Things To Do Now That You're A Mum, and I got a signed copy and a glass of lemonade. I urge you to purchase copies for anyone you know who's about to become a mum*, or has just become a mum, because it is full of useful advice like 'join a samba band', which isn't covered in the NHS 'Birth to Five' book (I know, I've checked).

6. I watched two episodes of Bonekickers and now I think I've been swindled by Time Team - real archaeology is all about fighting with baddies in underground caves and setting fire to unimaginably important historical artefacts.

7. I got massively over-excited at the news that Condé Nast is launching a new UK version of Wired, and have spent the last 48 hours wondering if I can persuade them to commission me to write an article about, I dunno, the carnivalesque production of the self in disembodied space or something.

8. I placed a bet on the new UK version of Wired not lasting more than five issues.

9. I grew 12 pepper plants from seed, and now I feel like Percy Thrower.

10. [LATE ENTRY] I realised that this blog is six years old today. Awww. How it all began.


* On which note, many congratulations to Scroobious, a recent recruit to the ranks of forthcoming parenthood.

Caption Competition

Yes, well done, it's the coat of arms of Richard the Lionheart (inventor of the bottomless scrubs), but are these really a pair of fearsome 'lions combatant', as heraldic parlance has it, or is it more a case of two really quite camp lions who've run into each other unexpectedly in the street?

Please leave your suggestions for what these two lions might be saying in the comments box. I have the ship's artist on standby to execute the best suggestions in the medium of pixel on light-emitting-diode...

UPDATE: Stand by everyone, for we have two winners! The ship's artist has been briefed, and the glorious victors will soon be immortalised in a new blog post...



(Image shamelessly appropriated from the Wikipedia entry here, although the circumstances are so morally ambiguous that I cannot quite think of it as theft*.)


* Which is clearly the best excuse ever for nicking something, and I plan to use it all the time, thanks Boris.

'Their Brains Turn To Mush'

Today's G2 quotes Theo Paphitis (some kind of businessman, apparently) holding forth about the uselessness of pregnant women:

[Women] "get themselves bloody pregnant and ... they always argue that they'll be working until the day before, have the baby, go down to the river, wash it off, give it to the nanny and be back at work the following day, but sure enough, their brains turn to mush, and then after the birth the maternal instincts kick in, they take three months off, get it out of their system and are back to normal".

(My emphasis.)

Is that so, Mr Paphitis, whoever you might be? Perhaps you'd like to know that even in my advanced state of uselessness, I have managed to do the following in the past couple of weeks:

1. Write a 2,000-word paper on how best to manage old corporate WANs and modern IP networks.

2. Write a list of recommendations for how to keep Eastern Europe economically competitive, which will (apparently) be presented next week to the president of Romania.

3. Write a number of letters to senior government officials persuading them that buying my client's software will help them to meet their revised 'efficiency targets' under the 2007 Comprehensive Spending Review.

4. Write an executive summary of the European software industry's recommendations to the EU for policy revisions designed to encourage technology-based innovation.

Of course it could always be the case that I just *think* I did those things, and that what I actually did was scrawl a number of rudimentary pictures of bunnies in crayon on the back of a cereal packet.

And there is the fact that yesterday I forgot to take my towel and my underwear with me when I went for a swim, meaning that I later had to trail round Asda WITH NO PANTS ON, the horror.

But still.

Optimal

Can anyone tell me how George Michael is in any way relevant to this story?

'A baby, who was brought back from the dead after she was accidentally knocked into a river by her mother, has lost her battle for life.

The mother and the three-year-old were unharmed after their ordeal, which happened around half a mile downstream from a house owned by George Michael, the popstar.'

Could it be anything to do with search engine optimisation, I wonder? Bad Torygraph!

The Avenger

INT. B&Q PENRYN - DAY

PATROCLUS and MR BC are looking for a saw. After some dithering:

ME: They all seem pretty similar to me.

MR BC: I'm going to get this one.

Presently:

MR BC: I've changed my mind. I'm going to get this one instead.

ME: You only want that one because it's called 'Predator'.

MR BC: Well, that's a good name for a saw.

ME: Blokes are so easy to market to. Just give something a ludicrously macho name, and you're away. There's probably a spirit level called 'Mutilator' in the next aisle.

MR BC: I don't know why more companies don't do that. If there was a toothpaste called 'The Avenger', blokes would never buy any other brand.

ME: 'The Dental Avenger'.

MR BC: No, just 'The Avenger'.

ME: What about 'Avenge'?

MR BC: 'The Avenger' is better.

ME: Righto.

Back In The House!

Hello blogchums, I am back after another BT-enforced exile in the Land of No Broadband. Hopefully the last one ever, though, as now we've seen the amount of stuff we own, we're planning never to move house ever again.

It seems that during my absence I was tagged twice (twice!) for the same meme, first by Oli and then by Clair.

Luckily this meme is a) easy and b) fun, as all I have to do is list seven songs that I'm into right now. But because I'm so lovely, I'm not going to just list them, I'm going to give them to you as a splendid free podcast! Well, I mean, it isn't a podcast really, it's just seven songs squished into one audio file, what the lovely Mr BC kindly made for me with his super Garageband software.

So anyway, here we go, seven songs I am into at the moment, with vacuous commentary:

Yeasayer - Sunrise
I don't know anything about Yeasayer at all, other than that the Very Short List thinks they're quite cool right now, which means that all the *real* New York hipsters probably liked them about a year ago, and they're now quite passé, but not so passé that you'll have read about them being the 'next big thing' in the Sunday Times. (I think that's generally the way it goes.) This track is enormous and uplifting, as are almost all the other tracks on this non-podcast. I'm in a kind of 'enormous and uplifting' mood now, musically. Possibly because I *am* currently enormous, and need lifting up whenever I ill-advisedly sit on the ground, to fix carpet trims and the like.

Gnarls Barkley - Run
Usually a pop song is popular because it has a catchy melody or some other catchy hook that makes you really love it at first but then after you hear it another three times you realise that's all there is to it and you feel empty and cheated and a bit sick, like when you eat a Big Mac. (I think Theodor Adorno had something sniffy to say on the matter, but it backfired on him somewhat, as everyone accused him of being a big Wagner-loving snob and apparently no one likes a big Wagner-loving snob.) Anyway, Gnarls Barkley are not like that. Somehow they manage to make amazingly detailed and fantastic songs that sound like they're the best song ever written and that they've been around for about forty years, even though they were only written last week. This is one such. Worship Gnarls Barkley, for they are very special.

The Shortwave Set - No Social (Optimo Espacio Mix)
I like the Shortwave Set, because they're what a British indie band should be like - male/female vocals, lots of weird instruments, they take a gramophone on stage with them, etc. - and then I read that Danger Mouse (of Gnarls Barkley fame) had produced their latest single, so I went looking for it, and then I discovered this great remix of it and thought 'that's even better!', so here it is.

Nirvana vs Supermen Lovers - Come As The Starlight (Overdub Bootleg)
I love mashups, and I love Nirvana, and I love French electro, and this has all those things! (With thanks to Rafael, from whose hopefully-not-actually-moribund blog I unceremoniously whipped it.)

Martina Topley-Bird - Valentine
I thought I'd better have something slightly more subdued at some point, so here's Martina Topley-Bird, ex-cohort of Tricky. She has a lovely voice, and this is a lovely song, and I think that is all that needs to be said.

TV On The Radio - Dirty Whirl
Whenever I get a new album, I like to circle it suspiciously for several months, before putting it away on my CD shelf for another couple of years or so, after which I will tentatively get it out and give it its first listen. So after originally purchasing it when it came out in 2005, I've finally got round to listening to TV On The Radio's 'Return to Cookie Mountain', whence this song comes. And now I've heard it, I can't get it out of my head. It's fantastically infectious and has lots of great lyrics about some femme fatale or other being a 'dirty little whirlwind'. I'd quite like to be thought of as a dirty little whirlwind, but it's unlikely, as I spend most of my time repotting geraniums and going to B&Q, rather than messing with rock stars' heads. Oh well.

Eminem vs Survivor - Without Me
It is Eminem's 'Without Me' mashed up with 'Eye of The Tiger'. There is nothing subtle about it at all. It is brilliant. Oh yes. You know it.

Here you go then:

Download Podcast (m4a, 27MB)

I now hereby tag Mr BC, Wyndham, Tim and Rivergirlie to list their seven songs of the moment - podcast optional.


IN OTHER NEWS: Thanks to Annie for bringing it to my attention that my Guardian Letters blog was plugged in the Guardian Guide yesterday. Woo! (Although frankly I'm still waiting for a proper answer to my BURNING QUESTIONS.)

AND ALSO: Congratulations to Sarah Peach and team for getting the long-awaited 'You're Not Alone' blog anthology book out on to the virtual shelves at lulu.com, and congratulations to Occasional Poster of Comments for getting into it!

Quote Of The Week

From a BBC article about a new eco-town project:

'The government has said that of the 5,000 homes to be built, 2,000 would be affordable.'

Presumably the other 3,000 will be pebble-dashed with emeralds, thatched with peacock feathers and priced at 80 billion pounds each. No wonder the housebuilders are going out of business.

They Seek Him There...

Stop panicking everyone, the wandering Wyndham has been located! He's in the tearoom, over here, no doubt serving up cake and the finest wines known to humanity.

Hurrah!

Criminal Justice

I've been commissioned to write a lengthy tract about some technology my client has developed that will apparently make the criminal justice system more efficient.

On a planning call with various 'stakeholders' in this project, the conversation wheels around to why I was selected to write this thing in the first place.

'So, Patroclus, do you have a background in criminal justice?' asks a stakeholder.

I pause briefly to consider my experience in the sector, which includes:

1. Being told off by a weary policeman for rolling in a municipal flowerbed in Forres, Moray, at 2am on the night before the 'Britain in Bloom' judges were due to arrive.

2. Having a disgruntled policeman pop up from behind a hedge to take my photograph as I participated in an episode of organised civil disobedience on Crown land as a protest against the criminalisation of peaceful mass trespass under the Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill (later Act).

3. Being forcibly manhandled off Crown land by a no-nonsense mounted policeman during the same episode.

4. Being tear-gassed by riot police in Park Lane, after a protest march against the aforementioned Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill (later Act) became somewhat lively, this liveliness including the burning of cars, trampling of flowerbeds and overturning of bus shelters in the aforementioned Park Lane, and the rattling of gates leading to Downing Street (the latter activity later immortalised in the opening credits of woeful 1999 Britflick Human Traffic, which is now notable only as an early celluloid outing for The Lovely John Simm (awww look at his little face, awww, etc.) and for having the Age of Love's 'Age of Love' on the soundtrack).

5. Receiving a phone message from the Devon and Cornwall police requesting that I go down to the station 'for a chat' following the publication of an article I had written for the student magazine about a conference at which representatives of the aforementioned police force had reassured local parents that 'there are no drugs in Devon and Cornwall'. (In proper Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas style I had turned up to the conference stoned, but only in order to give a hilarious ironic counterpoint to my article. My professional dedication has never been anything less than impeccable.) I didn't go.

'Erm, not really,' I reply.

Unpalatable Truths

In retrospect, getting pregnant within three minutes of arriving in Cornwall was perhaps a little on the hasty side, as it's come to my attention that lumbering pregnant women are all but useless at renovating stinky old houses.

So for example, I can get on to the floor to unscrew floorboards, which is helpful, but then I can't get up again, which isn't.

I can cut up old carpet with a Stanley knife, but only for about ten minutes, after which I have to whinge extensively about how much my back hurts.

I can walk to the shop to buy milk, but only at 0.0007 miles per hour, meaning that by the time I return, the milk has gone off in the relentless summer sun (curse you, relentless summer sun!).

I can carry stuff from the car into the house, as long as the stuff is made of paper or cotton wool or balloons, and not from wood or metal or china or anything remotely useful.

I can pull up weeds in the garden, but only until I see worms, at which point I have to squeal 'ewww, worms!' and run away - oh wait, that one has nothing to do with being pregnant and everything to do with being a namby-pamby ex-city-dweller.

There's one skill that hasn't deserted me due to my enormous bulk, though. I'm still very good at nagging. Nagging - or the repetition of unpalatable truths, as I prefer to think of it - barely hurts my back at all. And what's more, because I'm female and can multi-task, I find that I'm quite capable of nagging expertly at the same time as standing around cradling a cup of tea and a Digestive biscuit. While Mr BC scales ladders, paints ceilings, shifts mammoth wardrobe pediments from room to room, and heaves great boxes of flatpack garden furniture hither and thither.

All of it wrongly, of course.

Open Source Garden Advice

We've got the keys to the New House now, which is so exciting that I started hyperventilating outside Pizza Express earlier and some skater boys looked at me as if I was some kind of dangerous nutter.

Anyway! There's a tree in the garden that we want to cut back a bit, as it's draping itself all over everything...but we don't know what it is. Does anyone recognise it from the below photos, and if so, do you know if we can prune it a bit?


'The branches are kind of corkscrewy,' adds Mr BC. It's a bit like a weeping willow, only it isn't a weeping willow. Here it is from another angle:



Any and all suggestions gratefully received!

Patroclus and Mr BC Discuss...Stress

INT. LIVING ROOM - NIGHT

PATROCLUS and MR BC are waiting for the Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall programme to come on. A voiceover announces a forthcoming instalment* of 'Location Location Location'.

VOICEOVER: Buying a house is one of the most stressful things you can imagine.

MR BC: No it isn't.

ME: It's supposed to be. We must have done it wrong.

MR BC: I don't remember getting in any way stressed about it at any point.

ME: You were quite stressed about it the other day.

MR BC: Well, all these estate agents and solicitors kept ringing up to say 'Congratulations! You've exchanged!' When I was trying to eat my lunch!

ME: You aren't like other people, are you?

MR BC: No.


* Is this how you spell 'instalment'? Or is it 'installment'? I am having a minor crisis about it.

The Mug Chain

I am having a pleasant instant-message conversation with my brother about what we did on our respective weekends. Suddenly, apropos of nothing, the conversation takes an unexpected turn:

BROTHER: Did Alan Turing actually used to chain his mug to the radiator?

ME: I don't know. Did he?

BROTHER: I can't remember if it's true, or whether I made it up.

ME: I once tied a mug to myself*, but it wasn't my 'magic' Alan Turing one.

I do some digging on the internet, and discover several references to Alan Turing chaining his mug to the radiator. I duly inform the brother.

BROTHER: Ha! I knew I hadn't made it up!

ME: Is this for a client?

(My brother works in marketing too, and is often required to come up with 'creative ideas' to promote some piece of software or other.)

ME: Are you giving away branded 'mug chains'?

ME: Give us your business card, and we'll give you a FREE mug chain - just like Alan Turing's!

ME: Radiator not included.

It becomes apparent that my brother has sloped off, no doubt unable to withstand the vim and verve of my potent wit, so I relate the conversation to Mr BC instead.

MR BC: Is the mug included?

ME: Hm, I didn't think of that.

A companionable silence descends. Presently:

MR BC: It would need to be quite a long chain, so you could lift the mug to your mouth.

Suddenly this doesn't seem to be such a bad idea at all. Branded mug chains would be cheap to produce, and would surely be popular among the Turing-worshipping geek community, who would no doubt welcome a means of keeping their 'special' mugs - which they probably got from Linus Torvalds's secret bunker at the alpha launch of the Linux kernel in 1992 - out of bounds to their colleagues.

The chain could also imply 'security', and would therefore be an ideal booth giveaway for a security software company, like an antivirus company. And what's more, by ensuring that the mug is not used communally, the chain would - quite literally - prevent the spread of 'viruses' across the 'workspace', thus giving concrete, tangible form to an abstract, metaphorical notion; something the software industry has always struggled to do.

I am on marketing fire! I sketch a rudimentary mug chain on my to-do pad, and make a note to fax it to none other than Siralan** himself.

It is at this point that I notice it's already midday, and there's washing to be done, and boxes to be packed, and carrot cake to be made - and before I do any of that I have to write an article about online video for one client and a list of recommendations to the governments of Central and Eastern Europe for another.

The mug chain will have to wait. But ITS TIME WILL COME, goddammit.


* A true story, but one for which the world is not yet prepared.

** Sugar, not Turing. Alan Turing is dead, for a start, and therefore doesn't have a fax machine. And he wasn't a 'Sir', although he did more for this country than Suralan ever has, and what's more Suralan wouldn't even have had a company if it hadn't been for the work of his illustrious predecessor. And besides, faxing my idea to Turing, the rightful originator of it, would be tantamount to commercial suicide!

Revelations

The lovely Mr BC has tagged me (mainly because I asked him to, I've never quite got the hang of these 'meme' things) to answer the burning question: 'What revelations have you had since taking up your writing career?'

The reason I wanted to do this one is that I'm aware that quite a few of you are, like me, toiling at the unglamorous end of the writing industry, with no prospect of ever being asked to write anything about dragons, or ninjas, or unfeasibly attractive and scantily-clad Liverpudlian teenagers.

BUT WE HAVE FEELINGS TOO, DAMMIT!

So now I am going to impart some wisdom, and then I will tag some more of you to impart your own wisdom, and maybe together we can create a beautiful primer of everything that anyone might want to know about how to be a 'professional writer'.

Here we go then, some revelations I have had since I took up my writing career - or rather 'accidentally fell into' my writing career - nine years ago:

1. Being a freelance writer is brilliant. You get to work at home, have coffee whenever you like, look out of the window whenever you like and (usually) organise your working day however you like. Now there's the internet, and laptops, you can theoretically work from anywhere, which is how I didn't have to give up my job to go and look after my mum when she was ill, for which I am profoundly grateful.

2. Those adverts ('Make A Living From Writing!') that you see in the back of Sunday supplements are deeply misleading. Unless you're extraordinarily good, extraordinarily lucky or extraordinarily well-connected, you're never going to make a decent living as a freelance journalist, novelist or screenwriter. (Obviously this doesn't mean you shouldn't try, especially not if you're a naturally gifted creative writer, but just be aware that it's highly unlikely to make you unbelievably rich.)

3. This doesn't mean you can't make a decent living as a writer, though. You can. If you get enough work, and if you work hard enough at it, you can even earn the equivalent of a six-figure salary*. To do that, you need to be in the private sector. And not just any old part of the private sector - you need to be in an industry that's awash with cash. And not just any old industry that's awash with cash - you need to be in one whose products are complicated and obscure, and therefore need careful and precise explaining. It helps if it's an industry in which not many people know how to write about the products in a way that laypeople understand. Technology is one. Finance is another**. Pharmaceuticals is probably another one.

4. Once you get into one of these industries, and demonstrate that you can write beautiful, limpid prose that not only educates the target market about what the product does but also makes them REALLY WANT TO BUY IT, you'll be amazed at a) how much people are prepared to pay for your services and b) the kind of things they ask you to write. On more than one occasion, I've been paid to write an internal memo. Amazingly, there are people who have so little confidence in their own writing skills that they'd rather pay someone to write their emails for them. In some ways, I find this a sad reflection on an education system that has clearly failed a lot of people. In other ways, I'm eternally thankful that so many people feel unable to string two words together, because otherwise there'd be no work for me.

5. There's a received wisdom in the world of marketing that no writing is any good unless it's 'punchy', which means 'extremely short', 'devoid of verbs' and 'bereft of all meaning'. Many clients don't seem to care what the text actually says, as long as it meets these criteria. (This post of Matt's sums up the attitude nicely.) This means that I quite often spend all day writing meaningless 'punchy' stuff, which is why I like to be quite long-winded on this blog. Sorry about that.

Now then, let's hear it from fellow writers Great She Elephant, Bête de Jour and Rach. And of course anyone else who feels like joining in.

UPDATE: You can read Rach's very fine answer here.


* For the record, I don't have a six-figure salary, but I came within spitting distance of one during the dotcom boom. The dotcom boom was brilliant.

** I'm aware that the finance industry is currently emphatically not awash with cash, but give it six months and it'll probably recover.

Guardian Letters Project: The Results Are In

For anyone who's still following my FEARLESS INVESTIGATION into the possible gender bias on the letters pages of the Guardian and the Observer, I am proud and delighted (not to mention just a little bit deflated and depressed) to inform you that the final reckoning has been, er, reckoned, and you can see the results in these three separate posts.

I know this is not the most important thing in the world. I know that even by drawing attention to it I may be setting the cause of gender equality back rather than forward, a bit like Bidisha does with her frankly bizarre outburst about why people don't rate JK Rowling as a writer (thanks Oli for bringing that to my attention).

I may just be depressed because I read the comments thread appended to this XKCD post about the ratio of female to male leads in Hollywood movies (thanks Del for that one, via Slaminsky), and realised that there are a lot of people out there who won't accept what's staring them in the face, and probably never will.

Anyhow. Your fearless investigator ploughs on regardless, at least until teatime, when she's scheduled to continue the Firefly-watching marathon that she has embarked upon in response to your overwhelming recommendations. I am very much enjoying it so far.


IN OTHER NEWS: After what may have been possibly the least stressful house-buying escapade ever, Mr BC and I have exchanged contracts on the New House (which is actually a very Old House), and get the keys next Friday. Woo!

'The Gift'

Although this blog may give the impression that I am a saddo stay-at-home no-social-lifer whose idea of entertainment is staring intently at Statcounter until I begin to discern patterns in the data, like that geezer in A Beautiful Mind, I can assure you that nothing could in fact be further from the truth.

Why, only the other day I was round at the house of my friend S, whom I've known since we attended the same nursery school in the north of Scotland at the tender age of three, and who by some bizarre concatenation of coincidences now lives at the other end of the street from our new house.

S introduced me to her friend L, who was also visiting, and a pleasant three-way conversation ensued about the usual things: the 'usual things' these days being babies, epidurals, episiotomies (if you don't know, for god's sake don't look it up, especially not in Google Images) and the way one's outlook on life changes when one reaches one's late thirties.

S and L are more 'conflicted' about the latter than I am, because whereas I gave up my hardcore party lifestyle a good few aeons ago, S and L are still quite keen on getting out into the world and enjoying themselves in an, erm, uninhibited kind of manner.

(Only my friend S, for example, could go out on a Saturday night to play in a fiddle orchestra recital in a Cornish village hall, and return the following afternoon having seduced a Young British Artist - and for this I take my hat off to her entirely.)

L said that her fondness for partying combined with her status as a new mum had become untenable, and that she was leaning towards settling down and jettisoning some of her more bohemian friends. She no longer wanted to 'walk between two worlds,' as she put it - quite poetically, I thought.

So far, so Sex And The City Series 6. But then weird wavy lines descended across my field of vision and the next thing I knew the conversation had ceased to make any sense whatsoever:

L: Because it's a pain, you know. I just want to lead a normal life, but there are all these birds everywhere. Like the other day I was in the chemist's, and the shop assistant went all blue jay all over me.

S: What's blue jay?

L: You know, a blue jay - like a chough, or a linnet. You know. A lot of outpouring of emotion.

S (to me): L has the gift.

I nod dumbly and begin to wonder whether I've suddenly come down with a rare case of ergotism (I've been watching a lot of House lately, and if there's one thing that House teaches you, it's that you never know when ergotism might strike).

L: Yes. And like, you know, the other day, there was an owl moth in the house. You know those moths that have a pattern on their back like an owl? Well, my grandmother is an owl. And so I knew there was something wrong with my grandmother. And of course it turned out that she was ill. It's exhausting. I wish I could turn it off, but people need me.

S: You could just give it up.

L: I could, but you know, there aren't very many of us. I shouldn't waste it.

While I'm still wondering what the hell all that was about, not to mention whether there actually is such a thing as an 'owl moth', L decides it's time she went home for her dinner and bids us a cheery goodbye.

S later explains that L is a shaman, and is forever being called upon to escort unwanted bird-spirits from this world to the next. We agree that we wouldn't want to be shamans, although S goes on to claim that she inherited the gift of second sight from her grandmother, but doesn't like to use it.

I consider making some kind of counter-claim about my own 'gifts', but beyond the fact that I once passed Grade 4 piano, there's nothing I can immediately think of. I've always been the square one.

Cryptid Corner

When the lovely Mr BC and I were sojourning in Helsinki in 2006, we had occasion to take a trip to the beautiful medieval town of Tallinn, where not only did one of us have fish soup for breakfast (which is all kinds of wrong), but where, on disembarking at the ferry port, we also saw a solitary taxi driver holding up a cardboard sign that read 'BAT PEOPLE'.

I remember being terribly interested in this at the time, an interest that I am sad to say was not shared by my travelling companion, who was more interested in getting into town and wolfing down fish soup. (At breakfast time. I ask you.)

I still don't know who - or, more ominously, what - the taxi driver was expecting to pick up, but yesterday while going through some old photographs I happened upon one that might hold a clue to the mystery:


Blurry though it is, I think you'll agree that this image presents compelling pictorial evidence for the existence of a forgotten race of bat people. In addition to the creepy, batlike stance, on enlarging the photo you will also notice the unusual tonsure, suggesting that this particular specimen is a member of an elite ecclesiastical order - possibly even a high priest or priestess.

I can't find any references to a race of bat people among the usual literature, but I feel that this photo, combined with our experience in Estonia, points to more than mere coincidence. Could this be an ancient cousin of the Mothman, or even the Owlman of Mawnan Smith? I think it certainly warrants further investigation.

I Will Get Back To The Picts One Day, Honest

Goodness, what a lot of work I have on at the moment, but I feel neglectful of you, lovely blog-readers.

So here for your edification is a marvellous post from io9, all about the myth that women don't like science fiction (I have been instructed under no circumstances to refer to it as 'sci-fi').

Is it just me, or is all this 'women don't write blogs', 'women don't blog about politics', 'women don't write letters to the newspapers', 'women don't like science fiction', etc. thing becoming a bit tiresome? What do people think we do all day - go shopping and talk about shoes?


Women: not all necessarily like this.

As Annalee Newitz points out, women like science fiction all right - usually when it's got good female characters in it. And for my money, you won't find a better range of female characters anywhere on television, let alone in science fiction, than in Battlestar Galactica. Why, there are so many! And so varied! And they're all proper characters, with proper, complex personalities, in a proper story, not just simpering foils, or 'token feisty woman' characters, or one-dimensional babes.

And surprise surprise, everyone seems to like it. Maybe because that's what life is actually like*.


Battlestar Galactica: advancing the cause of gender equality, one vest at a time.

Something to think about there, eh?


* Apart from the imminent threat of annihilation by sentient aliens robots disguised as humans, obviously. Although...

Public Service Announcement

Readers! Do you also have a blog? Do you want to tell all about your blog to a complete stranger, in complete confidence? Do you have the stamina and strength of mind to answer many questions about why you blog, where you blog, when you blog, and whether you've ever actually, erm, 'got jiggy' with anyone as a result of blogging?

If the answer is yes then don't wait another minute - pick up your laptop and go to Bête de Jour's. He's doing a survey of bloggers and needs another 757 replies, apparently.

Go to it!

(Unless you've already done it, of course, in which case don't go to it, or you'll pollute the sample.)

It's Probably Hormones, Isn't It?

Question: is it *very* wrong that I have a sizeable girl-crush on a 16 year-old Australian pop chanteuse?



I thought so.