David W. Robinson's Blog: Always Writing, page 13

I’m Packed and Ready for the Off

Well, almost.

Tis a glorious sunny morning here the edge of the moors and my grand plans for doing zip were scuppered when Her Indoors suggested we start packing for Tenerife.

We fly off a week on Tuesday. Suffice it to say, I could have started packing at teatime a week on Monday, and still been sat down in time for Coronation Street.

As you can see above, the laptop, a clone of its big brother, is fully charged and raring to go. It drops into a rucksack, along with my video camera and Kindle. The stills camera, a Nikon compact, fits in my pocket.

So we began packing, and five minutes later, I was back at the workstation. Look below and you can see I’m packed and ready for the off.

So how is it possible to go for a week in Tenerife with nothing more than a carrier bag from our local convenience store? Simple. One pair shorts, one t-shirt (I’ll be wearing the other one from home) one pair socks (I’ll be wearing the other one from home) two pairs underpants (I’ll be wearing the other pair from home but I have to consider emergencies, especially with all that cheap beer).

That’s it. Can you tell me what more I will need on the Island of Eternal Spring? Shoes? I’m wearing ’em. Soap, shower gel, sun lotion? I can buy, beg, steal or borrow all of it.

Sadly, Her Indoors has other ideas… as below.

She needs to take 14 dresses and 28 tops, Half a dozen pairs of shoes, more knickers than you’ll find in an Ann Summers window display, plus creams ointments, cosmetics, and towels.

“Don’t the hotel have towels?” I whined.

A plea fallen on deaf ears as she proceeded to check the suitcase dimensions to see if the kettle and toaster will fit in it.

And it’s all right carting all this stuff with us, but most of it won’t get used, and we have to bring it back, which naturally means there’ll be less room in the cases for cheap beer and ciggies.

There’s no justice.

Idiomatic Idiocy

 

It was one of those throwaway remarks from Her Indoors. “I can’t wait to get to Tenerife.” To which I replied, “Well set off now, but I think you’ll find you’ll have to wait. The plane doesn’t leave for another fortnight.”

It got me thinking about these little idioms we throw into our speech. Suppose we took them literally.

We have the garden shipshape and Bristol fashion.

I don’t know whether fashions are any different in Bristol than they are in Manchester, but if you wanna get technical about it, the garden bears no resemblance to any kind of ship. We’ve no bow, no stern, no keel and no sign of any superstructure. And the closest thing we have to a bridge is a washing line, but I wouldn’t trust it to hold my weight from one end of the garden to the other.

I’ll just draw the curtains.

Tone and line, or a full colour sketch?

I‘m making the bed.

The hammer, nails and screwdriver are all in the shed.

I’m dying for a cuppa.

If you’re dying, wouldn’t a doctor be more help?

My feet are killing me.

What are you? Some kind of contortionist?

My favourite is, I don’t believe it.

You open the front door and your car is not there. Someone has nicked it. You turn to the missus and say, “I don’t believe it.”

All right. What’s the alternative?

Harry and Ron were late back at Hogwarts, so they jumped in and Harry said to Ron, “You drive, I’ll wave the wand to get us in the air.”

Or maybe the Starship Enterprise called by and Captain Kirk saw the car and ordered, “Beam that thing aboard, Scotty. I’m having those alloys.”

Burn In The Bag

It’s experiment time at Festung Robinson (cue theme from Quatermass)

It’s an idea from the supermarket.  Roast in the bag. It’s simplicity in itself. The roast comes in its own specially designed plastic wrapping, and you bung it in the oven exactly as it is.

I have serious doubts about this. The last time I used the oven for anything, we had clouds of black smoke pouring out in a matter of minutes. Mind you, I had had those socks on for a week, and the missus told me I shouldn’t have been drying them in the oven. But as I explained at the time, it was quicker and cheaper than putting the heating on and waiting for the radiators to warm up.

Course, they wouldn’t have got wet if my boots didn’t let water in but there was problem getting the boots mended. I couldn’t find any cardboard to cover the hole. Another week and I would have been fine because we’d have finished the Corn Flakes by then. And who would expect torrential rain in July?

When it comes to burn in the bag… sorry, roast in the bag joints of beef, we’re dealing with exactly the opposite problem. Fire.

The bag is manufactured from some kind of polymer and I know about that stuff. I used to deliver it by the lorry load. When it gets hot it has a tendency to catch fire or melt, and in either event, it gives off noxious fumes. A bit like John Smith’s Bitter after I’ve downed about eight pints.

I’m assured however that the bag will neither melt nor catch fire. Oh yes? I remember some wunderkind telling me the same about the everlasting, indestructible dog lead I paid twenty quid for. “Last you the entire dog’s lifetime, guv,” he told me.

Joe broke it inside a month.

Her Indoors is the culinary expert in our house, so she’ll be cooking the B-I-T-B roast this afternoon. I’ve dug out the fireproof suit, and I have a couple of extinguishers standing by.

And just to be on the safe side, all Fire Service leave has been cancelled.

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The First Holiday of the Year

It’s coming up to holiday time again. Marital #humour and the prospect of #Filey with memories of #Cleethorpes.

 

 

A Pipe, Some Slippers, but no Boring Cardigan

Her Indoors dragged me into town this morning for sundry errands which will be of no interest to any of you. Suffice it to say they cost money. They always do. While I was there, I thought it was time I treated myself to a new cardigan.

 

I’ve reached that time of life where the thing I value most is comfort, and I have this grand image of myself as a pipe and slippers man. It’s not strictly accurate. I smoke cigarettes, and I rarely have anything on my feet until I step on one of the dog’s abandoned chews, whereupon I curse the house down and then dig out me shoes or slippers.

Notwithstanding all that, as you can see, I have the pipe and the slippers. The pipe is a superb prop when I want to look intelligent, and the slippers have seen better days, but what the hell, they’re comfortable.

All I needed to complete the image was a boring cardigan. Can I get one? Can I hell as like.

I tramped all over town looking for one, to absolutely no avail. I can get windjammers, fleeces, hoodies, V-necked and crew-necked jumpers, even old-fashioned, tedious sleeveless pullovers, the likes of which I haven’t worn since I was about seven years old.

But I cannot get a boring, button-up or zip-up cardigan with two pockets, one for the pipe, the other for a box of matches.

Asking the missus is a waste of time. We were in the café in one department store, and while I finished my cup of tea I asked her to check on the price of televisions. She disappeared, came back ten minutes and told me they had some cracking lampshades at low prices, but she’d forgotten how much the TV sets were. On that basis I daren’t ask her to go for boring cardigans, for fear that she’d get a price on pleated skirts.

I even called in at a gents’ outfitters on the High Street, a place renowned for its conservatism. The fact that they still prefer to be known as a gents’ outfitters rather than a clothing shop tells you all you need to know about them. Their idea of a hoodie is a duffel coat three decades older than the one Jonathan Creek wears. They insisted there was no call for boring, button-up cardigans, and tried to sell me a three piece, double-breasted pinstripe suit, like the one my granddad was buried in.

On the way home, depressed and skint (what else is new?) The Empress reminded me that I do have a boring cardigan. She bought it for me seven or eight years ago. And she’s right.

But I can’t find it and anyway, it’s so old and scruffy that even the dog turned his nose up at it when I offered it him as a bed.

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A Travel Kettle and…What Else?

I really do have to hand it to Amazon. When it comes to customer service, they’re hard to beat.

Allow me to explain. As a natural born Yorkshireman, one who knows that money is not for spending but counting, I refuse to pay for delivery when there’s a free option. And when I say free, I mean free, no strings attached. I’m not interested in trial offers on this that or the other (especially the other) so whenever I order anything, I make sure it’s over £20 and I opt for standard free delivery in 5 working days.

About two o’clock yesterday afternoon, I ordered new travel kettle. Expedient since the old one has done more miles than my car, and it got broke in Lanzarote so we chucked it away.

Remember: two o’clock yesterday afternoon. The driver delivered it half an hour ago. Less than twenty four hours from ordering to delivery. Beat that.

Course, the order didn’t come to £20, so I had to put something else with it, and that’s where the bottle of sniff in the picture came from. Her Indoors has been nagging the pants off me for weeks about a bottle of Inspire from Christina Aguilera. The old bottle ran out. This is what comes of actually using the stuff. I meanersay, 100ml gone in less than three years. And it’s not as if I take her anywhere to warrant using expensive perfume. I wouldn’t care but I don’t even know who Christina Aguilera is. Come to think, I don’t believe the missus knows, either.

After considerable haggling yesterday morning, my DVD of The Thing From Another World (1951) got forgotten in favour of her scent.

And it won’t last a fraction as long as a DVD of The Thing From Another World (1951)

What’s That Title All About?

I have a low threshold of boredom and a lot of empty hours in the day to fill, so I tend to keep a number of projects on the go at any one time.

Right now, I’ve just finished re-cutting a short video, The Cake, a slapstick silent-ish movie, which you can have a chuckle at below. I promise you the drink was only Irn-Bru.

Having done that, I’ve returned to writing novels and I have no less than three simmering on the burners.

First it’s a sci-fi thriller, working title 499. I’m better known for my light whodunits and ribald humour, so that will appear later in the year under the pen name Robert Devine.

Next is the fifteenth Sanford 3rd Age Club Mystery, working title The Deaths at Squire’s Lodge.

It was originally planned as a Spookies novel, but I couldn’t get sufficient variation on the paranormal angle, and as a part whodunit, it’s fairly easy to transcribe. By the time it gets to Crooked Cat, it will be nigh on a year since we left Joe homeless, and the hard core STAC fans (yes, there are a good few) deserve a fresh volume.

Finally, it’s Midthorpe Mysteries #3, working title…

And that’s where I come back to the main thrust of this post. Set in a country club and spa, we find Raymond and Lisa up to their necks in chuckleworthy mayhem and dead bodies, but I couldn’t think of a suitable title. The Spa Murders or The Country Club Killings were fairly obvious, but because the Midthorpes stress humour as much as crime, I wanted something less Agatha Christie

Enter Trevor “I wrote Tracy’s Hot Mail and Tracy’s Celebrity Hot Mail” Belshaw.

Trevor has recently been plagued by Russian spam (aren’t we all) of the promiscuous kind, and he posted the text of one such laughable email last week. In it, the young woman (or old man posing as a young woman) indicated that (s)he was seeking “adequate man”

Note adequate man not an adequate man. As if he’s some kind of superhero. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No. It’s ….ADEQUATE MAN!!!  (cue stirring music from Superman, Batman, Indiana Jones, etc.)

We all had a good chuckle at it, and posted our tittering replies, but later, as I settled own to work Midthorpe #3, it dawned on me that An Adequate Man is the perfect title.

Why?

I’m not going to tell you. It would give too much away.

In the meantime, thanks to Trevor’s mystery correspondent, and keep an eye open for An Adequate Man, coming to an e-reader near you very soon.

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While you’re waiting, why not entertain yourself for a few minutes with The Cake?

Comments are open, so please feel free to have your say, and I’m quite happy for you to share if you so wish.

***

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Vlog or Blog?

Continuing my experiments with vlogging, today I ask the question, vlog or blog? What’s the difference?

 

Vlogging?

It’s about a month since I last posted, but I haven’t been idle. In fact, I’ve been learning, and an early result of lessons are below.

One of the big problems all authors face is letting people know they are there and they have books out there. I’ve always maintained that you cannot sell books. They are bought, not sold.

They’re not like food, gas, water, electricity, all of which we need. If you live out in the sticks as I do, you could add a car to that list. We tried doing without, but it was hopeless. The bus service round here is quite good… according to the timetable, but the moment you get three snowflakes on the windows, they stop running. Added to which, the timetable is a better work of fiction than most of my novels. At least my tales try to resemble reality.

I digress. You don’t sell books. All you can do is let people know they’re there, and one of the best ways is via the blog. Again, it cannot be hard sell. That puts people off, so like most authors, I make a conscious effort to avoid it.

Back to the main theme: about a month ago, I began to fool around with video, and I am now making my first attempt at vlogging. It’s a short piece, mostly to camera, with video inserts, on one of our favourite holiday destinations, Benidorm, and how a visit there last year, provided some of the background for my novel, Bumped Off in Benidorm.

Please take a look. Comments are welcome both here and on YouTube, and I’d be delighted if you shared it, but don’t feel obliged.

 

 

Making a Name for Himself

It’s surprising what you can do if you put your mind to it. Grinding out the words on my current WIP, I need a break now and then, and I’ve turned part of my attention to producing video.

I’ve been on YouTube since forever, usually turning out photoreel book trailers, but this is my first attempt at live video. No dialogue. With my current equipment, that’s a no-no. I can’t sync video and audio. Instead I went for almost-silent farce, and who better to appear in such shorts than Flatcap?

The lad is making a name for himself. He has his own channel, which is actually named DW’s Comedy Channel but it mainly stars Flatcap up to mischief as he seeks to fill the endless hours of retirement. Right now, he’s determined to get in shape, but we’re not quite sure what shape. Oblate would be an erudite description.

When I put the idea to Jan Rosser at Oapschat, she was so impressed and doubled up with laughter, that she asked for the videos so she could embed them on the site, and I’m sure the Oapschatters will love them. As an aside, Oapschat doesn’t stand for OAP’s chat, but Optimistc and Proactive Seniors Chat.

So there you have it. Flatcap’s fame is spreading. And if you want a taster, so you can judge what the fuss is about, here it is.

Flatcap has tried weight lifting and tried jogging. Now he’s turning to other forms of working out.

 

You’re welcome to share this post and the video, and I’d be happy if you subscribed to the YouTube channel… so would Flatcap.

You can learn more about Flatcap and his antics RIGHT HERE

And you can listen to some of his domestic diatribes on AUDIOBOOM