You may have noticed the rather In Your Face NaNoWriMo winner’s badge over there on the right. Yes, that’s right – my month of hell is finally over. I’ve written 50,019 words and I can now catch up with the rest of my life which includes updating this silly old site and trying to get back up to speed with all your blogs (if you can post a brief synopsis of your life over the last month that would be very handy, ta).
Only, I haven’t quite finished. I still have two sections of the book left to write before I can actually declare a complete first draft. That’s about another 3000 or so words to go. And for some reason, my two proof readers in my writing group are a bit miffed that I hurriedly wrote “and they lived happily ever after” right after I’d left the main character in a rather nasty predicament.
There’s no pleasing some people, is there?
Oh well… a couple more days work for me before catch up then…
In the meantime, here’s a link that may or may not be useful: Song Tapper. The idea is that you tap the rhythm out of a song you like (but can’t remember the name) using the space bar on the keyboard and the Song Tapper will suggest some matches. Hopefully good as a memory jogger.
Mind you, it hasn’t had much success with the ones I tried. Perhaps either my musical taste is too obscure or my rhythm is lousy!
Reading the article, it’s all a bit … hmm, maybe. Watch the video clip on the second page though and you can REALLY hear the five different “words” – it’s fascinating!
Meant to post this earlier, but congratulations to Jane (no blog, but frequently comments here on the Prattle) who gave birth to a baby girl around lunchtime last Tuesday!
For the techies, the LNB had blown. I’m so not going to tell you what it cost to replace, we’re still reeling ourselves.
Still, Cbeebies and sanity has returned after what has to be one of the longest weeks of my life.
All I have to do now is get them unhooked from Channel 5. Is it my imagination, or does that channel have NO programmes whatsoever – seems to be wall to wall childrens’ toy adverts:
Akra Jr: “I want that!” Li’l Bhaji: “I want that!” Akra Jr: “I want that!” Li’l Bhaji: “NO I want that!” Akra Jr: “We can both have that.” Me (muttering out of earshot): “Santa’s broke kids, and even if he wasn’t he has more taste than to buy THAT plastic tat.”
I know I’ve been really dismal at replying to comments the last few days, sorry about that. I am reading and enjoying all your comments though even if I don’t always get a chance to respond!
NaNo is going less than well. Tiredness is setting in, lots of other demands on my time have suddenly become urgent, I’m about 2000 words behind where I wanted to be right now, and more recently the satellite signal on our TV has disappeared.
Yes, I now have to write without recourse to CBeebies.
Finances being as they are, we’re going to have to wait until next payday to get it fixed, so I face the next two weeks of NaNo without the electronic babysitter.
Many congratulations to Turquoise Lisa who gave birth to a baby girl on Monday. I’m very jealous as she beat my record by posting the announcement herself a mere five and a half hours after giving birth. That’s dedication to blogging.
In the meantime, I seem to have completely lost the plot. I have spent most of the morning talking to my youngest son through a small plastic Knight as that appears to be the only way I can get Li’l Bhaji to do as he’s told… *sigh*.
Here at ‘Pewari Lite’, I’d like to quickly report that I reached 20,000 words in my NaNoWriMo novel about five minutes ago. Everything else is getting rather neglected at the moment, for which I apologise. I think my children still know my name, but it’s hard to be sure. Thank god for Cbeebies, either way.
Quick link of the day for you is an excellent article by Boris Johnson in the Telegraph entitled Come off it, folks: how many paedophiles can there be? which is a very refreshing and intelligent comment on the increasing level of paranoia in our society. I particularly identified with the following paragraph:
Even as I write, I can imagine the lip-pursing of some of my lovely high-minded readers. How would you like it, they will say, if some weird chap was plonked next to your kids? And they are right that I would worry about some strange adult sitting next to my children, chiefly because I wouldn’t want the poor fellow to come to any harm.
There are currently two male teachers at Akra Jr’s primary school, which is great. However, due to a rule that no teacher will teach subsequent siblings if it can be possibly be avoided (an excellent idea in terms of having preconceived notions of a child’s abilities based on the experience of their older brother or sister), it is likely that both boys will only have one male teacher in their entire primary school career.
In our current atmosphere of paranoia, combined with low wages and rock-bottom levels of respect for the teaching profession, it doesn’t surprise me that fewer men want a career in teaching, particularly at primary level. It does make me wonder though, what message are we giving to our sons about the role of men in society, if we are constantly suspicious of any male contact with children?
As if we still needed an excuse to drink red wine, there’s been yet another internation study looking at its health effects.
This time the conclusion was that red wine allows guilt-free gluttony – in other words, a substance found in red grapes counteracts many (but unfortunately not all) of the consequences of overeating. Must remember to imbibe heavily on December 25th then.
Now, if someone could just fund a similar study on the benefits of white wine, I’d be grateful. Just about to crack open a bottle in celebration of 12,000+ words for NaNoWriMo…
As if we still needed an excuse to drink red wine, there’s been yet another internation study looking at its health effects.