raining broken glass in a forgotten part of town

My replacement car has a better iPod control than the last one so it's a lot easier to just keep the entire music collection online.

I've enjoyed working my way through "The Magnetic Fields" over the last couple of journeys (interrupted by Michelle Shocked CDs playing on the way to and from her gig).

The Magnetic Fields front man Stephin Merritt is an enigmatic writer and produces quite experimental albums. I think I have all the ones available in the UK. There's 69 Love Songs, which is 69 (count 'em) love songs, Distortion (where the songs feature various forms of Lo-Fi distortion) and Realism (which doesn't).

And right now there's a new little film about him and the band, which is going through a kind of road tour release of its own. Stephin and Michelle - both producing independent music on independent channels.

Strange Powers.

tell-tale low-tone then high-tone beeps

Another blur today, with plenty of conference phone calls at roughly one hour intervals.

I nearly missed one around midday, which I was actually chairing.

I think I got away with being a couple of minutes late to sign in, as I could hear the tell-tale beeps of others joining after me.

Tonight I'll switch modes for a while. There's a good television programme later, but before that I'll try to lay down a few more novel words.

Low tone then high tone or maybe vice-versa?

michelle shocked roadworks 2010

The first time I saw Michelle Shocked live was at the Alvin Ailey in New York, as part of a John Lennon tribute evening. It was late in the year and shoppers were carrying fir trees to deck their apartments. I'd already got a large stash of Michelle's CDs by that time and have looked out for her occasional (rare?) visits to the UK.

Then a couple of years ago she played at Union Chapel and we somehow managed to be in the first row or two and last night we repeated it at a venue where we enjoyed another captivating two and a half hours in her company.

This time I think Michelle has visited Edinburgh, Bristol and will go to the London O2 Academy and - where we saw her - the West End Centre, Aldershot. Not a venue on my usual radar and one we initially struggled to find, but an interesting intimate venue and an excellent gathering.

Usually I'd call it a performance, but that implies something to be watched, whilst Michelle is strong on 'nowness' and involvement. She walked amongst the participants, encouraged singing on some and flicked into narratives around the songs.

There's already a huge back-catalogue of her songs and she mixed a few from the campfire and short sharp shocked days with a celebration of the Arkansas Traveler album from about twenty years ago. It was one of those sets where every number sounded fresh and strong with Michelle and the band breathing energy into every note.

Michelle told us of what she described as her five year road trip and of a new project: an album around famous women and we heard an early version of one of the new tracks. The small band of fiddle, banjo and Irish bouzouki were excellent and everyone played with flowing, adaptive ease.

There were discussions of politics, philosophy and the edges of theology, mixed with messages of happiness, love and hope. We grinned our way through the whole concert and the band including Michelle even jammed their way through the interval.

A sublime evening.

sitting by the road watching well-fires burn by an old October moon

Spinning around the lanes today, admiring the changes of season, head full of half baked plot ideas and poet-picker music.

There may not have been any well-fires burning in these fields, but in my strange little Nanoverse anything is possible.

...Sorry, its probably the ginger and pineapple talking.

location detection

I was at Canary Wharf on Thursday and then later at The Swan pub on the River Thames.

At both locations I was a little early to arrive and had a few minutes waiting time.

Like many, I'd usually use this to clear a few emails or phone calls, but on this occasion I was looking at the scene for its novel inclusion possibilities. I've already built Smollensky's and the clocks into the plotline and think I might be able to do something derived from characters in the scene as well, but I've not yet written anything with the early evening pub venue.

Unusually for me, I was camera-less (other than iPhone) at both locations, so the blurriness in these pictures is haste rather than intended effect.

Still.

Enough of this I should get back to writing. Both scenes should be worth at least 500 words.

NaNoWriMo

Its only a few days into this year's NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month and I wasn't convinced that I'd even get out of the starting box. I tacitly joined up again to get a sense of the buzz and to be able to offer some encouragement to past scribblers.

In practice, the amount of participants this year seems to have swamped the NaNoWriMo site, so I can't actually access it most of the time, instead getting 'SQL errors' and other strange messages. I expect it will subside by the weekend.

For my own attempt, instead of carrying on with the Triangle sequels (The Square is under preparation at the moment), I thought it would be fun to start with a completely blank page. No Plot. No Characters. No Preparation(!) Just to see what happens.

Once again, its a fascinating process. From the first word "He" to the first scenario, it became another experiment with what could happen in this situation. I've still got a rather random collection of characters placed in coffee bars, office blocks and on transport systems, but its already starting to have the makings of a faltering story. In truth, I've no idea where it will go or what will happen, preferring to just think about some 'set-up' at the moment. Once again, placing characters into situations seems to let them define their own operations.

I'm about 6000 words in, which worryingly is enough to make me feel as if I should continue. But this year I have so little time, so I guess I have to trade out sleep.

Waiter, bring more of your finest expresso.

Biotree Inc

Yes, I'm still tapping away...

The Biotree company they worked for was a producer of biotech equipment. It had developed several of the nanotechnology based products which had created a renaissance for British industry. The most famous was the Aport, which could be used within a bloodstream to manage the walls of veins and arteries. It had revolutionized healthcare since its originally controversial introduction and been developed into a range of products which could manage blood flow, cholesterol build-up and some aspects of cleansing of contaminated organs. The Aport ran as a series of nanobots, which were inserted into a person’s blood stream via the same type of cartridges that were used to manage general heath.

The company had made its fortune from both the devices and the complex software that was required to make them run successfully and without error.

London was still the global headquarters for the company, with other administrative locations in most major countries. The tentacles from the company spread wide and the product base was routinely customised to markets.

The huge secretive manufacturing plants for BioTree’s core nanotechnology were based in several locations around the world. Nevada, USA; Toulouse, France and Melbourne, Australia.

Research and Development had been moved to Bodo in Norway as a strategically safe location. Just within the Arctic Circle, it still had good infrastructural connections including fast land transit, extensive seaborne links and the small matter of a major NATO airbase nestled within the town. The origins as a strategic base went back to annual shows of strength known as the Cold Response, which still occurred under the less obvious title of CORE.

It had other advantages. A local population with their own language, whilst also possessing perfectly good English language skills for handling the incoming scientists. A university base, which had been developed extensively as part of the run-up to the creation of the research faculty.

The location also had an interest appeal for the people stationed there, who were attracted by leading edge research, the best facilities, no practical budgetary limitations and a world class lifestyle during their term. Many tried a six-month spell and then remained for much longer.

Added to this, the Norwegian government had been particularly understanding since the changes in global energy policy as they had needed to re-provision from the decline in North Sea oil and natural gas. They had granted the area a special status as a world economic development zone and it had boosted the relative ranking of the still sparsely populated Norway to a top fifteen economy in terms of its economic freedom.

The subtext was the immense security that surrounded the environment and the commitment of those employed to maintain the secure nature of their work. The Bodo environment was also small enough to mean that unusual activity would be quickly spotted and with the added incentives of the kriminalitetsforebygging (KRÅD) - the criminal intelligence organisation providing added rewards for useful intelligence.

In its heyday Biotree was simply a money machine as the demand was pretty much world-wide and the patents and manufacturing processes had been extensively locked down during the prototyping cycle.

Therefore the employees of the company were routinely subjected to heavy screening before they joined, were provided with extensive benefits and the equivalent of ‘golden handcuffs’ making it exceptionally undesirable to want to leave.

That had been the case until around year ago, when a Chinese manufacturer had started to produce the first clones. Strictly, they were not clones at all. They were a totally different way to produce the same outcome. It was evident that some very smart people had somehow reversed engineered the ‘bots and also the operating systems and now created something extremely similar in its function, but at what worked out to be one tenth of the price.

That had tipped the market and the little nest egg of un-vested shares that Janie and Karin had received when they joined the company were now worth less than one-tenth of their original value. These changes had heralded the management changes and the new people that now walked the corridors.

an insurrective kitten post

Some fat cats lived at the top of a hill.

They had a ball of string and messily wound it around everything. Some kittens took a look at the string but became tangled up in it. The fat cats laughed, pulled the string in and and somehow got fatter.

This made the kittens very angry and they managed break some of the string and chased the fat cats off the hill.

But the fat cats left their messy string behind and the kittens got all tangled up again. The fat cats decided they could drink tea and watch the kittens get in a muddle for a while.

The kittens soon realised the string was the cause of their problem. Unfortunately, the messy fat cats had left so much string that it was too much to clear. The kittens tried and tried but every time they moved some of the tangled string out of the way they found even more knots underneath.

The fat cats shrugged and pretended it was not their string. The kittens had been there long enough for it to look as if they had put the string there in the first place.

pulse

Scrive clicked the new cartridge into place in his forearm and felt the cold rush snaking from his arm to somewhere inside his head.

Next he checked briefly the small plexi inspection window and could see his blood already changing from a bright red back to orange and he knew that within another twenty minutes it would again be the safe yellow colour.

Like everyone, he knew that red blood spelt danger and he had been particularly careless to let his system deplete its supply of the tropus for so long.

He could now feel a pulse and almost a bubbling sensation on the side of his head above the eyeline on the left side. He knew this was his body regaining its equilibrium. He squeezed both his hands into a fist shape they way they were taught and used his two middle fingers to massage the fleshy areas below his thumbs whilst his system adjusted.

Another five minutes and he was walking to the Tube station. He lived less than ten minutes on foot from the nearest stop and his ride to his office was around fifteen minutes. He could feel the cartridge working and his relaxed acceptance of the day’s tasks was already returning.

He looked briefly towards the sky. A jagged spark had flicked across moments before and now there were what looked like gentle vapour trails crawling along behind what had been a brief tear shooting along the path of the River Thames.

Others walked at a similar pace towards the station, although he ducked to the right into a quieter street that also cut a corner and missed some traffic crossings.

He glanced as he prepared to cross the diagonal into the station and glimpsed someone he recognised.

She had a petite almost boyish build, dressed in black, dark hair in a black band. He’d noticed her for three days now, at exactly the same spot, the same pace and the same appearance. He knew she would look up and he’d see the small tattoo by her left eye. At least he assumed it was a tattoo and not a consistently applied daily make-up. As she passed, he thought he could hear her gently humming a tune. Maybe an iPod, but he couldn’t see any signs of her wearing one.

He descended in to the transport system. His new cartridge meant he had a good range on his transceiver again and could access the transport system without overtly waving his arm over the sensor.

Most travellers referred to the sensors as ‘oysters’ although this was a reference to a long defunct technology, much as the Tube itself was merely a reference to the shape of the original tunnels that formed the original wheel-based transport system.

He used the moving floor system to get to the high-speed transit level and stood for a moment waiting for the next transit pulse. He clipped himself into a free TPOD seat and punched in his destination. The system was pretty foolproof. His cartridge provided the main co-ordinates for his routine travel and a short personalized menu of options had appeared on the screen and he’d just tapped his planned destination.

Of course, he could go to other points within his normal routes or pre-authorise other destinations in advance, from the homelink system. Today was regular, though, or at least that was what he needed to suggest, despite what had happened yesterday.

harbouring intent

Back from idyllic harbours and tang of salt water, to a door that wouldn't open properly because of the accumulation of weekend mail and papers. That's in addition to the complementary hotel newspapers brought back theoretically to read.

At one point during the weekend we were chatting about Generation Zero, which has a premise to operate with a very low consumables footprint.

Minimalist possessions, tread the earth lightly and so on.

I don't think I'd pass the entrance qualifications. As I type this I'm looking at probably two kilos of papers that I might read, and earlier I wheeled the completely full blue bin of recyclables and a separate green crate of glass to be collected tomorrow.

Maybe the upcoming novel writing month will drive "create" over "consume"?

allentide's dark gathering

Maybe today we'll head along the coast to a couple of sleepy fishing villages.

Our current base camp has offers of spas and saunas as well as mysterious references to a dark gathering by scary little girls.

I shall be paying attention to owls, bats and broomsticks later today.

cornwall unplugged

Cornwall today, now that my stint at the London event has concluded.

It gave me a chance to try out the new car, although taking it straight to an area with lots of winding roads with narrow clearances and hidden stone walls wasn't necessarily part of the plan.

This car makes beepy sounds if it gets too close to things and various levels of flashing lights appear to encourage suitable caution.

I'm thinking that if that stealth submarine that ran aground had included some of the radar technology from my car then we still wouldn't know what it looked like. Instead, we can draw cutaway sketches of the latest British secret technology.

I don't have my usual computer with me at the moment, and am posting this by a typewriter which I've connected to the internet with clothes pegs and string. There may not be many pictures, until I return from being a friendly pirate.