Hitting the Ground Running

Robyn Young, who I interviewed a short while ago about her book, Brethren, emailed me today with some exciting news. After just four days of being on sale in the UK, Brethren's shot in at number 7 on the UK Bestseller Lists!

You'll see it in the Sunday Times chart this weekend!

This is brilliant news for Robyn, but hardly surprising. After all, Brethren's been an enormous success in the states and I'm sure that's a trend that'll be repeated on our side of the pond.

Feeling Old

As I was filling up Bebop today, it occured to me that I'd been driving for over ten years.

And, in that time, petrol had almost doubled in price.

That made me feel very old. Especially as I found myself explaining to the sixteen year old behind the till that "back in my day, four star was only 54p a litre!"

Back in 1996, I was driving a lovely red Triumph TR7 called Tiffany. Sadly, they've double in price too. If only they'd doubled in reliability. Then maybe I'd have talked T into letting me have one!

The Writing Process

I'm pretty smug about my blog.

I've been lucky enough to interview two great authors so far. Ian Hocking and Robyn Young. And I asked them both about how they went about actually planning and writing a novel, because I really wanted to find out how succesful authors did it so I could hopefully follow in their footsteps.

Robyn revealed that she had ELEVEN drafts of Brethren, which is pretty amazing. And on Ian's blog, he pretty firmly puts his opinion across that 'real' writers don't plot things out. They just sit down and write.

I can't argue with him there. After all, that's the same technique Stephen King uses and he's one of the last century's most popular and prolific authors.

I have to admit, though, that I can't aspire to the heady levels of Stephen, Ian and Robyn. I've been writing stories since I was about twelve and if I've learnt one thing, it's that I need to plan them out.

If I don't plan my stories, they end up going nowhere. I write myself into a corner and I can't work my way out of it. Previous attempts at novel length stories, like The Island Affair, have involved me writing six different 'branching' versions until they all end up sunk.

So I plan my stories. I plan 'em like crazy.

For Adventure Eddy, I spent three months writing a chapter by chapter plan of the story. It ran to 20,000 words and almost 100 pages. And I suffered writer's block on that, I'm telling you. Plot leads ran dry. Characters acted... well, out of character. As each mishap mishappened, I was grateful that I hadn't written the full novel up to this point (since I'd normally have to chop the last three chapters and start again.)

The upshot of this was that, when I actually sat down and wrote the story, I never once experienced writer's block. Everything was already established in my head. The story hung together and all I had to do was transfer the stuff in my head onto the page.

So that's why I've decided to plan out every story from now on.

Which leads me onto The Bootleg Boys.

This was the story I'd started when I thought up the plot for Adventure Eddy. It featured Eddy coming back from France and I wanted to write the prequel to explain what he was doing there.

Now that's established, I decided to carry on with the story. It was all pretty much in my head. I just needed to cement the plot.

And in doing so, I decided there were two things that needed to be changed. Two characters, to be exact.

First off, Tania Masterson.

You probably don't know who she is. Back when I first wrote Adventure Eddy stories, I created her as the spoilt daughter of classic car collector Phillip Masterson. She, like one hundred hackneyed episodes of The Saint, was the love interest daughter - since respectable fiction didn't feature girls who could drive stories of their own.

In the Bootleg Boys, her role had changed. Daddy was out of the picture, but she was still the same icy, focused blonde.

But the thing is, she clashed. In writing the plot plan for The Bootleg Boys, Tania never sat right. She clashed with the other two female characters, Melissa and Lucy.

In plotting out The Bootleg Boys, I decided to axe her in favour of Esperanza.

Esperanza, like Eddy before her, stepped into my head a fully formed character. A skinny, tomboy Spanish girl with a mean streak. Immediately, the she made my story flesh out with amusing episodes of pyschosis and a touching back story.

Secondly, and more significantly, was Angus.

Angus Connelly is almost as old as Eddy. I thought him up as the sensible foil to Adventure Eddy's mischief. He was unabashadly based on my best friend at the time, Fraser. A tough, no-nonsense Scot (well, Fraser was a Geordie) with a wry sense of humour, Angus was the sort of person you'd love to have at your back when you got into trouble.

But the problem was, Angus was one dimensional.

Each story involved him being the straight man to Eddy's goofy quips, the sensible one who convinced Eddy not to launch his more mental schemes. That was it. That and the fact that he was Scottish.

A year or so ago, I came up with a new friend for Eddy.

Now, this runs the risk of sounding incredibly politically correct, but I was aware of the fact that Adventure Eddy's universe was inhabited pretty much exclusively by people of the caucasion persuasion. So the character of Pranay seemed to fit in perfectly. A second generation (is that right? His parents were Indian) Londoner who was a cocky, street-smart and cunning equal to Eddy.

I stole the name Pranay from my instructor on my The Local Radio Company induction weekend.

Unlike Angus, Pranay had enormous potential as a character. He was sassy, smart mouthed and clever. As soon as I dreamt him up, I could imagine him hustling money, making deals and basically being the perfect foil to posh, dumb Eddy.

Putting together the story for the bootleg boys, I'm really excited to have these new characters to play with!

Beep beep beep beep!

Tina spends at least twenty minutes every morning trying to find her keys.

She loses keys all the time. If she was a superhero, her power would be the super ability to lose keys.

Because of this, we invested in a keyfinder. It's really clever. You attach it to your keyring and when you can't find your keys, you whistle. Then, a little "beep beep beep" tells you where your keys are.

As we often do, Tina and I had a "discussion" this evening and we discovered the most amazing thing. When Tina's particularly upset about something, her voice becomes so high pitched that it sets the keyfinder off.

Our "discussion" tonight was interspersed by frequent "beep beep beep" noises.

It was very difficult to keep a straight face with that going on, so things soon got patched over.

Brethren

Anybody keeping an eye on upcoming books will probably have heard of Robyn Young's Brethren, the first in a highly anticipated trilogy of historical novels set during the Crusades.

Brethren's already been released in the States and immediately shot into the best-seller lists over there. I've no doubt exactly the same thing will happen here.

Niall Christie happens to be very good friends with Robyn and was kind enough to put me in touch with her regarding the possiblity of some radio interviews. Hopefully you can catch the lovely Dina Burgess interviewing her on 107.2 WinFM in early September.

Now, I'm in awe of writers. A few months ago I interviewed Ian Hocking, author of Deja Vu, and quizzed him on his approach to the writing process. Incredibly cheekily, I asked Robyn if she'd be kind enough to answer some similar questions.

And she did. Yay!

NOTE: I actually... erm... lost my questions in the period between writing to Robyn and her answering. (Apparently the same sort of thing happens to Michael Parkinson all the time.) The questions in bold are pretty much what I asked Robyn, but might not be exactly word for word.

How long goes past between coming up with the idea for a story and actually sitting down and putting pen to paper?

It’s fairly hard to answer the first question, what length of time passes between the idea and the first moment of writing, as it varies from project to project. My first two novels, unpublished, were to be part of a fantasy series and I think I simply sat down to write them when I was inspired. Brethren was a much slower process, because of the fact that I had to do so much research before I could even think about facing the blank page. I also spent a few months playing around with different perspectives and characters before I began writing seriously.

RH: Do you plan your novels? What sort of planning process did you go through?

I had a pretty good idea overall what I wanted to include in the trilogy, in terms of particular events, characters and story lines. But I didn’t plan out Brethren as such. I worked on the novel for more than six years and in that time changed the narrative from first-person to third, did away with some characters and subplots, established and invented others, altered my style dramatically and found my voice. Rather than follow a rigid plan, this organic approach enabled me to experiment and discover what did and didn’t work. However, the penultimate draft did end up with a tangle in the middle, which was quite tricky to unravel. Now, partly because I’ve found my voice and partly to avoid tangles, I work in a very different way. I’m halfway through Crusade, book two of the trilogy, which I planned out completely before I started, to the point of writing an in-depth synopsis for each chapter. It’s an elaborate plot, covering seventeen years and several major historical events that are all connected to my fictional story. Because, now I’m published, I’m writing to strict deadlines, I cannot afford to finish the novel and discover that it doesn’t work. I need to know, from the outset, that it will. Of course, things do change in the writing of it: you find some ideas don’t work as well as you thought they would and certain characters take on more of a role than you anticipated. When that happens, I simply change my chapter breakdown accordingly. I think it’s a question of recognising and allowing the conscious and unconscious processes to work in their own ways: structure can keep you grounded and give you confidence, but you also need to allow your creativity to have its own way and let out its leash a bit.

How different was your first draft from the published manuscript?

I guess I’ve answered this question above! Yes, the manuscript in its first draft was very different to the novel that has been published. I have eleven versions of Brethren on my computer, to give you some idea.

What sort of editing process do you go through? How do you most effectively edit your writing?

I was writing Brethren whilst on two creative writing courses at university, one of them a Masters, and I picked up numerous editing techniques during this time. The most valuable for me, which had the greatest impact on my writing, was sharing my work with other writers. In groups we would read out our poetry or prose and give one another feedback. It’s no good if everyone in this group isn’t willing to be honest. I found you needed to develop a sort of sensitively brutal approach to be effective. Some people call it the shit sandwich. Start with a positive comment, then give the criticism, then cushion it with another positive comment. The key thing about a group like this is trust and that is pretty much the luck of the draw on courses. I was fortunate to work in a very tight group on my Masters, who were all serious about their writing and about giving and receiving feedback. When the degree finished, I set up a writers’ group with another student and the five of us have now been going for four years. Each member has had a real impact on the novel and has been invaluable in terms of support. I’d say the second best editing technique, after sharing work with others, is reading work out loud. You’ll pick up more mistakes, repetitions and clunky sentence rhythms this way than you will when just reading from the page.

Well, I found Robyn's answers fascinating and am incredibly grateful for her answering them. Check out Brethren (including dozens of glowing reader's reviews) on Amazon or visit Robyn's brilliant website at robynyoung.com.

I will confess, there was one other question I wanted to ask, but didn't have the guts to.

What safety precutions do you have in place to prevent Orlando Bloom (who probably kept his chainmail from Kingdom of Heaven) being chosen to appear in any possible film adaptations of Brethren?

Between a rock and... Well, another rock...

Irony.

To all those people who've ever claimed that American's don't understand it, I'd like to direct them towards the Department of Homeland Security.

You see, T and I have been waiting for almost three years for our permission to go back. For an awfully long time, we'd put our lives on hold thinking that it was just around the corner. For the first year of our marriage, she lived in New York and I lived in France because we seriously believed it would only be a few months before it got processed.

Eventually, after I'd worked my last summer in Paris, reality took hold. It'd been six months since we'd been promised our visa would be processed (within six months.) Both of us were fed up with the way things were going, so we decided to be together. Hence, we arrived in Winchester and life came banging on our door.

From day one, we thought everything would be short term. We told our landlord we'd probably only be there six months. I stressed about telling WinFM I was looking for a career when I'd originally envisioned just a few months flogging spots. Tina started off at the Hampshire Chronicle thinking that we'd be back in America before we had time to settle in.

But life didn't work like that. The Immigration Authorities lost our visa. They found it again. They sent it to Missouri. Then they sent it to Paris.

After a short while, T and I just got to the stage where we thought it would never happen. And, without thinking about it, our lives began.

Now, two years later, we're both stressing about leaving.

I've just started work at Gcap Ideas. I'm the creative writer for Hampshire. I write radio commercials that go out on the airwaves to over a million people. Apart from periods during my association with Summer Study, I've never felt as content and excited about a job as I do at the moment - and I've only been there for a month.

Tina writes columns in the Hampshire Chronicle. She's also the Head Receptionist, which means she's pretty much the face of Winchester's newspaper. In the last two years, she's enjoyed opportunities she'd never have had in the states.

All in all, life is good and to a huge extent, I've found the contentment I was looking for.

And now, just as all is settled, we get a letter from the United States saying we can go back to America.

Now that's great. Even if we stayed in England, we wanted to go back for Thanksgivings and Birthdays. To see Tina's family. And now we can.

Except, like so much in life, it's not that simple.

You see, now the United States has decided that Tina and I can go back to America, there are certain... Stipulations.

We have to return to America within the next six months. And when we do go back, I get stopped at the border, 'processed' and given instructions to remain until I get my Permanent Residence Card - my Green Card.

That could take six months.

When I've got that little card, I can come and go as I want for the rest of my life. But until then, I'm exiled (or imprisoned) in the United States.

It's a situation Tina and I can't quite get our heads around.

We love America. We want to go back. It's certainly where I see us making a life for ourselves... But we hadn't quite seen us making it this soon.

I wanted another year in Creative, so I can go back to America and get a job doing what it is I love. Tina wanted another year with NewsQuest and then she can go back to America and have access to job's aplenty with the Gannet Group.

It's just so ironic. We'd waited so long for this stupid stamp in my passport and now we've got it, we're scared of going back.

I know it may sound ridiculous. Like; "what are we complaining about?"

But here it is. We're both upset because it seems like the US Government had expected us both to put our lives on hold - totally- for three years while their pen pushers and desk jockeys got their act together. If we'd done what they'd expected us to do, Tina would still be waiting tables and I'd still be writing dirty stories for Hustler. But the fact is, we've grown and evolved and we're both different people from who we were when this process started.

I look at that VISA in my passport and see somebody completely alien to me. Somebody I was three years ago.

BA Halts flights!

Roland Hulme: Permanent Resident

This morning, a postman knocked on our door and handed me a package, containing my passport and US Visa, granting me unconditional permanent Residency of the United States.

Tina and I ran about for five minutes in a daze, wondering where to hide it. For the last five years, I've always carried my passport with me (in case I've needed to hop onto the Eurostar for a quick one at Harry's.) But now my passport is the most valuable thing we own, so we hid it.

We also noticed Tina had left the lid off the hamster cage, so the little fella has gone walkabouts.

It's just an amazing experience, to finally 'have it.' A little page in my passport that finally, after thirty three months, means that Tina and I can return to America.

We were fairly sure we'd got it on Wednesday, after our Visa interview, but didn't want to tempt fate by blogging about it before hand. But here it is.

Anyway. As I'm sure you'll be FASCINATED to know what the process is, let me tell you.

On Wednesday morning, Tina and I got up at 05h00 and drove to the station, where two return tickets to London set us back £94.50. After taking a few deep breathes, we took the train up to London and the subway to Bond Street, where we collected my medical results (and I'm in storming health, by the way. Doctor did point out originally that my liver wasn't too good, but that's entirely cured after a brief period of abstinence.)

Next, we set off towards Grovesner Square. I told Tina it was only a block or two away from the doctor's. Tina didn't believe me, so she asked a "policeman" (actually a traffic warden) where the embassy was. He said it was miles away. That inspired Tina to hail a cab and we then proceeded to pay five quid to be ferried precisely fifteen feet to the corner of Brook Street.

Next, we waited in line for about an hour to be let in by the enormous Embassy dude.

Embassy dude is famous. A rotund fella with a ZZ Top beard and mirrored shades, he is mentioned in just about any Expat or VISA forum on the internet. He was quite flattered when Tina told him (again, proving that Tina can endear herself to just about any human being by one flash of her smile...)

We got searched and let into the embassy. Then, like at the cheese counter of Sainsburys, we were handed a number (011) and told to wait.

And wait.

And wait.

About two hours later, we got called to one of the windows (exactly like at the post office) and a lovely Jamaican girl went through our paperwork with us. Fortunately, Tina's incredible, hamster like storage/filing ability meant that she had easy access to every piece of paper we have ever been handed in the last three and a half years.

"Police certificate?" Here we go.

"Birth certificate?" Here it is.

"Medical forms?" There we are.

"Receipt for bottle of coke you bought at Charles de Gaulle airport in October 2003?" Here we go.

The only thing we were missing was some form of proof that Natalie (Tina's sister) was an American citizen. We, beingnaivee, had assumed that the fact she was Tina's sister might have suggested she was an American citizen. Basic genetics aren't good enough for the federal government, though, so they entered her name into a computer.

Bang. Up came copies of her passport, driving licence and birth certificate.

Which was great for us, since it meant we had all the paperwork we needed. It was slightly scary, though, because it suggests that there is NOTHING the United States Government doesn't know about it's citizens.

Anyway. After that, we were asked a couple of questions by a tough looking chap who seemed to take a shine to Tina and obviously thought I was a bit of a schmuck, but he handed us the 'pink sheet' with the comment: "Your file, which looked like it was going to be horrifically complicated, actually turned out to be quite straightforward."

So there we go. Three and a half hours later, we were stepping out of the Embassy security area into Upper Brook Street with a look of dumb exhaustion on our faces.

After three years, it was over. Done.

Roland Hulme is now a permanent resident of the United States of America.

Three Years of Waiting...

In less than twelve hours, Tina and I go to the US Embassy, London, and finally undergo the final stage of our VISA application. We have been waiting since November 2003 for this.

Thirty three months. The average application is processed in less than six.

We have two enormous briefcases stuffed with documents. Items to prove we've been legitimately married for almost three years. Everything from payslips to birthday cards. Tina's paranoid that they won't let us in with SO MUCH paperwork. I'm paranoid all this paperwork isn't going to be enough to get the VISA sorted.

Funny. It's been an incredible journey so far. Is this the final furlong?

What's next?

We'll let you know how it works out.

Extinction

Father popped over to Blighty a short while ago for little Serafina's christening. While he was here, he gave me a copy of a book called Extinction, by Ray Hammond.

He thought I'd be interested in it because of two brief passages, in which the hero, lawyer Michael Fairfax, returns to America from abroad.

"Mr Michael Benjamin Fairfax?"

The lawyer turned from his place in the shuffling queue to see a pale, bespectacled young man in a creased brown suit, besides whom stood an airport cop with his thumbs hooked in his gun belt.

"Yes?"

The young man flashed a badge. "U.S. Immigration. Would you please follow me, sir?"

"My bags," protested Michael, pointing towards the distant bank of carousels. People in the line were now staring at him as if he were an illegal immigrant - or a terrorist.

"We'll have them collected for you, sir," said the immigration officer. "This shouldn't take long."

There follows a long interrogation scene, regarding details of a court case Micheal is preparing, which the U.S. Authorities have a vested interest in. It continues:

His interview with the government agents at Sacramento Airport had lasted almost three hours. Then he had been escorted back through Immigration to the baggage hall only to discover that, while he had been detained, U.S. Customs had ripped open and searched through every one of his bags. They had then left his clothes and toilet articles in a heap for him to repack. They had also managed to crack the glass in the silver frame containing a photograph of Lucy, Matthew and Ben.

Dad had thought it interesting because my experiences with U.S. Customs had been quite similiar - even down to the glass in a framed picture of Tina being smashed.

Those interesting details aside, Extinction is a fascinating and brilliantly written book which is growing ever more topical. It concerns a near future in which corporations can control the Earth's weather, via enormous mirrors in space which can redirect the Sun's light. But what long term effects will controlling the weather have?

With most of the world (myself included) still ignoring the very real evidence of global warming, this book suggests that the inevitable consequences of our cavelier attitude towards the environment might arrive sooner than we thought.

How well do you know your other half?

Questions asked during the US Visa Immigration Process...

1. Name and Date of Birth of Spouse.
2. When and where did you meet your spouse?
3. Describe this 1st meeting.
4. Did you make arrangements to meet again?
5. Did you exchange phone numbers?
6. When did you meet next?
7. Where were you living at the time? Where was your spouse living?
8. When did you decide to get married? Where were you at the time?
9. Did you live together before marriage?
10. When and where did you get married? How did you and your spouse get to the church, courthouse, etc.?
11. Who were the witnesses to the ceremony?
12. Did you exchange wedding rings?
13. Where had you purchased these rings? Did you and your spouse purchase them together?
14. Did you have a reception after the ceremony?
15. Where was it held?
16. Do you have any photos of the ceremony and /or reception?
17. Describe the reception.
18. Did any of your, and your spouse’s, family members attend? If so, who?
19. Did you go on a honeymoon? If so, when and where?
20. If you did not have a reception, what did you do after the wedding ceremony?
21. Where did you live after the wedding?
22. Describe the place where you lived right after the marriage. Number of bedrooms and bathrooms; furnishings; color of walls, floor coverings, appliances, etc; type of air conditioning, heating, etc; # of telephones, televisions, etc. Do you have cable television?
23. Where did you get the furniture? Was it already there, did you buy it, was it a gift, or did it come from your, or your spouse’s, previous residence?
24. If brought to the house or apartment, describe how it was transported.
25. Describe your bedroom. Where do you keep your clothes? Where does your spouse keep his or her clothes? Where are the bathroom towels kept? Where do you keep the dirty clothes?
26. Where is the garbage kept in the kitchen?
27. On what day of the week is the garbage picked up?
28. Where do you shop for groceries? Do you go together with your spouse? How do you get there?
29. Where do you work? What days of the week do you work?
30. What hours do you work? What is your salary?
31. What is your telephone # at work?
32. When was the last vacation you had from work?
33. Did you and your spouse go anywhere together at that time?
34. When was the last vacation you and your spouse took together?
35. Where did you go? How did you get there? Describe it.
36. Where does your spouse work? What days of the week? What hours? What is the salary, if you know?
37. What is your spouse’s telephone # at work?
38. When was the last time your spouse got a vacation from work?
39. Do you or your wife have any scars or tattoos? If so, where on the body?
40. Do you know your spouse’s family members? If so, which ones? If your spouse has children from a previous marriage, their names, ages, where they live, and where they go to school, if applicable.
41. Where do you live now? (If different from where you lived right after the marriage, then go over the same questions as above). How much is the rent? When is it paid? How do you pay it?
42. Do you have a bank account together? Where? What kind of account? (Checking, savings).
    Are both of you listed on the account? (Do you have a bank letter, cancelled checks, etc.?)
43. Did you file a joint tax return this year? Do you have a copy with you?
44. Do you own any property together? What property? Did you bring copies of the documents with you?
45. What kind of automobile do you and your spouse have? Describe them.
46. Do you have an insurance policy listing your spouse as the beneficiary? If so, do you have a copy?
47. Have you taken any trips or vacations together? Do you have photos from these trips?
48. Do you have any utility bills, or receipts from items you have purchased together?
49. What other documentation do you have to show that you are living together as husband and wife?
50. Do you have any pets? What kind, what are their names, and describe them?
51. What did you do for Christmas, New Year’s, your anniversary, or you or your spouse’s last birthday? Did you exchange gifts? If so, what kind of gift?
52. Did you or your spouse go to work yesterday? If so, at what time did you and/or your spouse leave the house and return?
53. Who cooks the meals at the house?
54. What is your spouse’s favorite food? What is your favorite food?
55. Does your spouse drink coffee? If so, does he or she use cream and/or sugar?
56. Did you eat dinner together last night? Did anyone else have dinner with you? What did you have?
57. What time was dinner served? Who cooked it?
58. Did you watch TV after dinner? What shows did you watch?
59. At what time did you go to bed? Who went to bed first?
60. Did you have the air conditioning or heater on?
61. Who woke up first this morning? Did an alarm clock go off?
62. Did you or your spouse take a shower?
63. Did you come to the interview together? Who drove?
64. Did you have breakfast? Where and what did you eat?
    

If there's any justice...

Number One singer Lemar popped into the office today!

I didn't tell him that, every time I hear "If there's any justice..." it makes me want to pinch myself until I bleed.

He was being interviewed on Power and popped up to see Erika, who is an enormous fan (and wrangled a smooch out of the big fella.)

I'll never forgot his words to me:

"Hi, Man."

Lovely bloke, though.

This concludes Roland's gratuitous celebrity name dropping

Random Quote

“You’ll tear the world to pieces, all to find something that’s only in your mind. And when you finally have it, you’ll realize it was just a dream.”

Leslie Charteris
The Saint Overboard

L'ordinateur qui ne mourir pas...

The talented Ian Hocking, who readers of my blog will know I'm a fan of, is a geek.

He has self-confessedly (yes, I know that's not a word) geeked out with a review the the computer he writes on. And in his recent interview with Mil Millington (author of Things My Girlfriend and I have Argued About) he asks: What kit do you use to weave your masterpieces? Feel free to geek-out on the details.

As a result, I have decided to reveal to the world the kit I use to weave my stories.

It's not a hypermatic supercharged electrostatic computer masterpeice. But it is very special. It is the laptop that would not die. Or, since my friend Sarah Bailey revealed that everything sounds better in (my poorly translated) French, it is l'ordinatuer qui ne mourir pas...

Just recently, T and I managed to get our house sorted and we established a space in our spare room where I could write. That was what called for the unzipping of body bags, the application of unGodly science and the ressurection of the computer that had given birth to Adventure Eddy.

My computer is an eMachine. It is a first-gen Pentium, with a floppy drive and a CDROM. It has two USB ports and and QWERTY keyboard.

Many years ago, I had a girlfriend who gave me this computer to write my stories on. It was pretty nifty then. A bit out of date, but it had a word processor and everything I needed to write with.

It travelled with me through the USA, France and England. It ruggedly connected to the internet at the Pierre et Vacances in Paris and in a little terraced house in England. It slogged on reliably while more modern computers packed up.

But time marched onwards.

First to go was the screen. It had always been a bit 'pink.' Like taking too much viagra or something. Apparently there was a loose connection with the LED. Anyway. Eventually, the pink turned to red and then, the screen died.

Then the '2' key fell off the keyboard.

And the battery exploded. And the hard disk died.

In fact, this computer, which had seen me through SSIP 2003 and 2004 and got stories published in Hustler, seemed to be past the point of rescue.

But like Herbert West in the old H.P Lovecraft Stories, or the BBC with the new Doctor Who, or whoever that idiot was who invented the series "Enterprise," I refused to let it die.

The broken screen was replaced with a monitor from a car boot sale.

The keyboard was replaced with a keyboard we got on store credit from Computer Solutions on Jewry Street.

The USB ports were held together with duct tape.

And it lived. IT LIVED!!!

Now, despite all the odds, the computer that saw me from beginning to end on Adventure Eddy is alive once again, to hopefully allow me to write The Bootleg Boys.

I wanted to write about it, because it seems like anti-geek, to me. As close as IT can get to the dark art of VooDoo. And, hopefully, Adventure Eddy will get published and Ian Hocking will want to interview me and then I will be able to reveal to him the dark, unnatural creature that is MY computer.

Mwuh ha ha ha ha ha!

Roly the Human Pin Cushion

Today I had my medical for my U.S. Visa.

I can't claim it was a painless experience, but it wasn't unpleasant.

Heading up to London, I strolled through Oxford Circus and made my way to the medical centre. The only medical centre in London authorised by the U.S. Embassy to conduct these medicals. Which they charge £160 a time for.

Whoever landed that contract deserves a bloody medal.

Anyway. I was injected with vaccines for Tetnus and MMR, which was bloody painful and has given me a sore right arm, then marched in to see a charming German doctor who poked and prodded me in the sort of ways nobody's done before. At least not without buying me a drink first.

I did get a clean bill of health from him, though. No high blood pressure. No dodgy lung patterns. We're pretty sure the HIV and Syphillis tests will come back clear *(I get them on Monday, so watch this space.)

Then I had an x-ray of my chest and I was free to go.

I'm feeling a bit fluey and achey after the MMR jab (which is normal) and hopefully the test results will be satisfactory to the US Government. I'm confident I don't have HIV or Syphillis, but they do test your liver enzymes for signs of mental illness (i.e. drug or alcohol abuse, according the the U.S Government) so I'm a bit worried about the fat glass of rouge I've enjoyed after work each night since... Well, since as long as I can remember, actually.

But it's over.

Everybody was charming. The doctor especially. He was German 'und schpoke vis a very strong German accent, ja?' I was a bit self concious hopping around in my undies in front of him.

My bruised arms and irradiated midriff will recover. Our bank account too, but it wasn't a cheap visit. A few posts ago, I mentioned the costs of returning to America. I seriously underestimated the cost of this medical.

Parking at Winchester Station: £6.20
Return ticket to Waterloo: £40.80
2 Underground tickets: £6.00 (six bloody quid!!!!!)
Cost of Medical: £160.00
Cost of MMR jab: £35.00
Cost of Tetnus jab: £25.00
Cost of HIV/Blood test: £25.00

Total: £298.00

No wonder I don't go to the doctor more often!

* That's meant to be sarcasm, by the way. Of course they'll come back clear.

Adventure Eddy is Back Online!

British Telecom have finally come through with the internet.

Therefore, after three weeks, I can check my email. And, you know what?

I only had one.

Anyway. Now internet is restored.

Adventure Eddy is back online, with an update everyday, starting with the long overdue Chapter Thirty Seven.

The Island Affair

I came across this article on the internet the other day. Telegraph Journalist Jan Moir popped over to Tresco for a few days and came back with a scathing report of her time there.

You can find the article here.

Most of her complaints are ridiculous. For example, her husband demanding the morning papers so early. Sorry, Bucko. They get flown in every morning on the 09h45 flight. They ain't gettin' there any quicker unless they swim. If the enjoyment of your holiday rests with reading the morning paper before breakfast, maybe you should have gone to Bognar.

But the bits about the food I found fascinating. You see, as some of you might know, I spent eight months working on Tresco in the summer of 2000 and had an interesting take on Jan's article. I knew how the kitchen worked in 2000 and, since the same chef runs the place, continues to work to this day.

I suppose Chef and I were never destined to be friends. Once, he came close to punching me because I allowed a customer to order a side salad with their meal instead of chips. It never bothered me much, though, because if you thought Chef was bad, you should have met his brother. He was the kind of pyschotic monster who SHOULD be living on a remote island miles away from civilized society.

Anyway. In my day, the rule was Profit Margin. Which means when Jan Moir writes: "What restaurant serves mashed potato with a starter? A restaurant with mashed potato left over, is the only conclusion worth concluding." I can sadly confirm that she was absolutely right.

I saw some shocking things. Like a beautiful monkfish that sat, uncooked, for four days until some customer bought it. Chef would rather sell it past it's prime than let it go to waste.

'Stomach bugs' were very common among visitors to the Island Hotel.

Anyway. It's such a pity, because Tresco is a wonderful place. Maybe this article will inspire some positive changes out there on what we used to call "Trescotraz."

Pointless trivia: At one point, the Isles of Scilly were going to be twinned with New York City (five islands/five boroughs) but the guys in charge of the Islands turned that offer down. Apparently they didn't want: "a bunch of American tourists trapsing around."