I haven't participated in NaNoWriMo for several years, although my heritage goes right back to 2007 and I've part written seven(!) novels in that time.
National Novel Writing Month began in 1999 as a straightforward challenge: to write 50,000 words of a novel during the thirty days of November.
Now, each year on November 1, hundreds of thousands of people around the world begin to write, determined to end the month with 50,000 words of a brand-new novel. That works out to 1,666 words per day if one is on track!
I feel it's about time to try again, although I will shake free from the characters I wrote about in The Triangle. That was written on Apple Pages and was a good experiment.
This time I'll use Scrivener and perhaps Dragon Dictate to help speed me through the word count.
"With a single leap he was free," goes the adventurers' storyline. Certainly there were no ditches to be seen on the television, and the conjurors had already moved on to a new trick.
As if proof were needed, I was able to crash test into a ditch quite successfully a few days ago.
We'd been using some rental bikes and were skittering along The Camel Way, which is a great little trail in Cornwall. We had a wide variety of bicycles - I had a 'sit up and beg' red Raleigh and accomplices had everything from a bike with a tow-passenger to a blue chopper Tricycle. The trike was interesting, being only powered on the right hand wheel (as are all trikes), which made it want to steer to the left.
Now the trail is an ex railway line, so you'd expect it to be pretty flat and fairly straight.
It didn't stop me from falling off - a slippery pedal and I was down. The ditch was quite soft. My companions kept going.
An impressive array of traffic warnings yesterday. I suspected the worst, which would be that all of the alternative routes would also fill up.
Sure enough, I found myself following a sat-nav diversion which took me through Gloucester. I knew it was a bad idea and am not surprised that others took to trains to be regularly replenished with food and drink.
Instead I had that effect where I didn't know where I was and then as each hopeful roundabout approached my cheer was soon dashed by yet another rush hour traffic jam.
I suffered my 90 minute time penalty on what was supposed to be a six and a half hour journey. My final arrival time was around 20:30, some nine hours after I'd set off. A day of the tentacle traffic cone.
It is always trickier being on the road and blogging. Sometimes it is the nature of hotel and other connections, or perhaps the device being used to blog.
A couple of interesting situations emerged. One was that something in my travel kit is intercepting location services to tell a phone service to call me with those unhelpful traffic management insurance claims.
Another is the continued emergence of spambots blasting my comments trail, in an attempt to improve their rankings. It was noticeable when one of those comments came in, because it had not filtered the comment script and I could see the entirety of the fake comments neatly arrayed, along with their parameter-substitute words.
The software to create these form of comments is readily available for around $35, and in a single pass it will identify 500+ sites and then bombard them with automatically formatted comments. Watch out for self-proclaimed Search Engine Optimisation specialists. Snake oil salesmen.
Then, where the labour force is cheap, there's another way to do this. With click-farms, which connect dozens to hundreds of mobile phones together to 'like' a single post, or cultivate a presence.
The next election should be interesting when the combined forces of clickfarms and spambots support the various candidates.
We'd agreed to meet in Newcastle, by the Earl Grey Monument.
The clocks had changed, so it was already chilly and dark and we decided to head for a reliable Pina Colada spot - Browns- in Grey Street. Once we'd arrived, it was obvious that they'd closed Browns and put up an All Bar One instead.
It's an occupational hazard in Newcastle, with many of the chain restaurants closing and re-opening as a brand buddy of the original one. La Tasca closed on the Quayside and in its place was an Iguana, although there's already another Iguana about 10 minutes walk away. I suspect it is all spreadsheet driven, according to what appears popular?
We abandoned All Bar One, which didn't look anywhere near as buzzy as the old Browns and instead headed for a different new place- Banyans- (not really new, it replaced a Jamie Oliver back in March...see there is a theme)
It had a similar wide floor space format (to pack em in) and some pleasant tables around the edge. Mysteriously, the menu covered all options from Mexican, Italian, Thai, pies and burger.
I'd explained that I was hungry, so we hunkered down with 2 for 1 cocktails and some pleasant-enough pub food.
Then on to an aerial pub commanding the square.
Not the Botanist, which would have served us more exquisitely-priced cocktails.
Instead to the Charles Grey, which sits on the second floor opposite the Monument. I'm not sure whether shabby chic covers a description of the place. It reminds me of a set from something that Punch Drunk would imagine.
Friendly enough service even when the selected (Edinburgh) beer was around £5.40 a pint - which tops many London prices and is decidedly uncommon in Newcastle.
“It will be found .. that the ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic.”
SPOILERS: Classic Disney magic, now over 25 years old.
We see Halloween Town as a fantasy world filled with monsters and supernatural beings associated with the time of year.
Jack Skellington, the "Pumpkin King” and prime minister of the town, leads the town in organizing the annual Halloween celebrations. However, privately Jack has grown weary of the same routine year after year and wants something new and diverting.
Wandering in the woods he stumbles across seven trees containing doors leading to towns representing various celebratory holidays, and opens the portal to Christmas Town.
Awed by the unfamiliar holiday, Jack returns to Halloween Town to show the residents his findings, but they fail to grasp the idea of Christmas and compare everything to their ideas of Halloween
They do relate to one Christmas Town character; a red lobster-like king who flies at night named "Sandy Claws".
Jack goes to his tower to study Christmas in order to find a way to rationally explain it, but cannot. He decides that it's unfair for Christmas Town alone to enjoy the holiday and announces that he and the citizens of Halloween Town will independently take over Christmas this year.
Jack assigns the citizens of Halloween Town Christmas-themed jobs, based upon the ones in the real Christmas, including singing carols, making presents, and building a sleigh to be pulled by skeletal reindeer. The tasks and outcomes may look similar, but they are not.
Sally, a beautiful rag doll that is secretly in love with Jack, experiences a vision that their efforts will end in disaster, but Jack dismisses this and assigns her the task of sewing him a red coat to wear.
He also tasks Lock, Shock and Barrel, a trio of mischievous trick-or-treating children, to abduct Santa Claus and bring him back to Halloween Town.
Jack tells Santa he will be bringing Christmas to the world in his place this year. Jack orders the naughty trio to keep Santa safe, but the children instead deliver Santa to Oogie Boogie, a gambling-addicted bogeyman, who plots to play a game with Santa's life at stake. Sally attempts to rescue Santa so he can stop Jack, but Oogie captures her as well.
Jack departs to deliver presents to the world, but the Halloween-styled gifts terrify and attack the populace. As concerns over "Santa's" behavior grows, the military takes action and shoots down Jack, causing him to crash in a cemetery.
While the residents of Halloween Town think he's been blown up, Jack has survived, and he bemoans the disaster he has made of Christmas, he finds he enjoyed the experience nonetheless, reigniting his love of Halloween.
Jack returns to Halloween Town and finds Oogie's lair. Oogie tries to kill Jack, but Jack pulls apart the thread holding his cloth form together, revealing a massive pile of bugs that fall into Oogie's cauldron and are killed. Jack apologizes to Santa for his actions, and Santa assures Jack that he can fix things and returns to Christmas Town.
As Santa replaces the Halloween-style presents with genuine ones, the townspeople of Halloween Town celebrate Jack's survival and return.
Santa then visits Halloween Town and brings them a Scissorhandian snowfall for the residents to play with, which in a way, fulfills Jack's original dream. In the graveyard, Jack and Sally declare their love for each other.
There's something disturbing about the kind of politician who writes two contradictory notes to the EU, whilst still clinging to the principle of "implementing the voice of the people".
We know he is a mischief maker. His attempts to undermine the EU from his times as a journalist confirm this.
That he misrepresents things. From the platform of the red NHS bus.
That he can't be trusted. Any number of private/personal events illustrate this.
That he'll use bluster and handwaving as a cover-up. The million to one chancer and his ditch hyperbole demonstrate this.
But he's got a good script-writing team. The dark strategist, a partner in PR and a club of Old Etonian hedge fund managers.
It makes it easier for middle-folk to follow and replay the sound bites. "Get it done", "Get on with it", "Over the line", "Take back control", the platitudes foam easily and fit placards well. Throw in a few serious looking softly spoken henchmen, and the blend is complete.
Of course, there are other placards too.
This opportunist wilfully ignored the chance for re-negotiation, preferring pretence whilst building a blame case. Then, as the water became rather hot, he substituted a few pages from Theresa May's deal around Ireland and borders, reverting to one of the prior attempts at a resolution.
He's also rebranded the paper. It is not Theresa's paper (4th Attempt). Now it has egotistically become Boris paper Mark I.
Many people ignore that the Withdrawal Agreement just gets Britain out of the EU, along with that payment of £39 billion. Call it a divorce settlement.
It's the Political Declaration that sets the non-binding aspirational aspects of life after Brexit. All of it will need to be negotiated. After it has been costed.
The EU don't regard it as commitment. Everything in it will be up-for-grabs in the months and years succeeding the so-called deal.
I started to watch Giri/Haji (duty/shame), which is a gangster series set in Tokyo and London. At the centre are Kenzo and Sarah (Takehiro Hira and Kelly Macdonald) who are two broken, lonely, people. There's unexpected crime and gangster moves almost from the start and a few drifts into Manga comic-telling.
The story moves from Tokyo to London, which gives a few "Crocodile Dundee" style fish out of water moments and some fun with the subtitles as the story-telling is in Japanese and variously accented English.
Throw some noir, grit and plenty of rain into the mix and then add a few epic story telling moments about saving face, honour and reputation and the series has the makings of an atmospheric few hours.
The same goes for the characters, which have been purpose designed to provide for the most colour and texture. Some might say it has the usual tropes, a cockney geezer running a London night club, a ruthless female fixer, the wayward daughter of the main Japanese cop, various suited Japanese henchman. The list goes on and just as the series reaches a climax in Episode 4 there's another whole heap of goodies tipped into the mix to sustain interest for the other half of the series.
A few scenes run long, when the characters are chatting about life and the universe, but there's enough quirkiness to keep things moving with a light knowing touch.
It's a tad experimental in places, with monochrome, spilt screen and contemporary dance blended into the mix. I didn't mind in the least, it made for a trippy dippy experience.
“This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle.
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, this other Eden, demi-paradise.
This fortress built by Nature for herself, against infection and the hand of war.
This happy breed of men, this little world.
This precious stone set in the silver sea, which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house, against the envy of less happier lands.
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.”
Well, that is how Richard II saw it, according to Shakespeare.
Richard II didn’t have it all easy though, what with Baron Bolingbroke and the Duke of York always plotting. Bolly became King Henry IV after Richard's surrender. At Henry's command Richard was carted first to London for display and then to Pomfret Castle, where he was starved to death on Henry’s instructions.
Not that Richard II had a tidy life. He was involved in the Peasants' Revolt, and the murder of Wat Tyler. He later married the teenage Anne of Bohemia as a way to rally Germany against the French.
Then he tried to raise taxes for an army but the Wonderful Parliament said nay. A gyration of Britain to whip up support for an army, but his card was already marked by John O' Gaunt and the Lords Appellant. Roll on the Merciless Parliament where Richard’s previously supportive chamber Knights were condemned and executed.
Richard reestablished control with the volte-face 'moderation' of John O’ Gaunt(above). Consultancy 101: Never trust an advisor who enjoys standing in the shadows.
Richard could blame his erstwhile councillors for the choppy conditions. As a 29-year old he soon let loose, and after the plague took Anne, he decided that to maintain peace with France he would marry the then six-year-old Isabella, daughter of Charles VI of France.
We are just entering the tyranny phase of the King, who sought to eliminate his rivals from earlier years. John O’ Gaunt was using his direct influence to manipulate Richard and to set up the duketti, his private fawning courtiers.
Now Richard could summon his packed Parliament to Shrewsbury – known as the Parliament of Shrewsbury – and there to declare all the acts of the Merciless Parliament to be null and void, furthermore to announce that no restraint could legally be put on the king.
This had the effect of delegating all parliamentary power to a committee of twelve lords and six commoners chosen from the king's friends, making Richard an absolute ruler unbound by the necessity of gathering a Parliament again.
And all the time manipulators could whisper little commands in Richard’s ear.
I sense some parallels with the influencers and fawning courtiers of more recent times.
“Things sweet to taste prove in digestion sour.” ― William Shakespeare, Richard II (act-i, scene-iii)
Famously, the Mekon of Mekonta devised 10 ways to destroy the world. Cumming's brain isn't as large and his social graces are not so expansive, so he's had to settle for one main idea and a selection of cheap tricks.
Boris already knows the desk-dumping trick. It's a classic in business. Friday afternoon, and too much to do? ~Email the problem to someone else. End of Quarter? move that troubling debt to someone else. Inconvenient Withdrawal Agreement? Move the difficult bits into an Appendix...oh Wait..Into the Political Declaration. It's a masterstroke.
Troubling complexity about trade agreements and tariffs? bung it into the Appendix.
No-one will read it, anyway.
Those bits of Theresa's paper that were the most contentious? Slide them across to the PD.
But that's not all.
Obfuscation will also assist.
Make the new Withdrawal Agreement a Revised Protocol. It doesn't remove the original agreement, but shifts plenty of paragraphs around. "Of course it isn't the same document...Look how much work has been done on those 58 new pages" (ten percent should be enough).
And unlike the original Political Agreement, don't publish a PowerPoint summary. People might be able to understand that, instead of going swivel-eyed trying to match the original PD with the new one. In practice, the changes from Theresa May's Withdrawal Agreement are limited to a few pages. Check out the yellow changes and the red deletions here:
And then, the final master touch. Go unconstrained. No budgetary limits. Resource needed? Spend. Spend. Spend. Promises? Unconstrained. Even facts can become unconstrained, too. Soundbites? Unconstrained. Listen to Duncan-Smith, Gove, Raab or Rees-Mogg. These Treens are not communicating, they are fabricating. It's straight from the Mekon's handbook.
When I was travelling across deserts in places like Arizona, Utah and Colorado I was told to watch out for the scorpions. Now, I’d expected them to be quite large things, appropriate to my birth-sign, but actually, most of the scorpions were small, weedy and transparent looking. That’s not to say they couldn’t pack a sting if they were surprised and needed to throw some self-defence moves. Many scorpions are nocturnal and hide in crevices, caves and under rocks during the daytime. A pair of boots makes a snug hidey-hole.
With this in mind, I realised my mistake with the analogy to cornered rats in a recent post. Surprised scorpion is a more likely analogy. Boris can scuttle into a tunnel and then surprise everyone with a sting operation.
I suppose that is what he is doing now. He’s sent out slathering Gove to break down the electorate into digestible pieces, whilst he waves his arms about threateningly.
Then he’ll use the crushing claws of a mendacious deal like a peace fund or a slab of infrastructure as an attempt to appease the Irish politicians. He’s not averse to using a few morally dubious negotiating chips too. All will be revealed over the next few days.
It's all a con, of course, Theresa May’s paper makes a reappearance, with the expensive consultant helpers translating it into French and then back into English to make it look different: "Ceci n'est pas un accord de retrait.”
Don't give anyone time to read it or analyse it, just reveal it at the last possible moment with a tilted one-page summary.
Then it will be casino time. As Downing Street puts it: “Britain is out of all EU laws. We will be able to change our laws in a huge number of areas from product standards to fishing rules and farming subsidies where we are currently bound by EU rules.”
Yes, we were all aching to do just that.
It’s like a scorpion looking out of a tunnel but not noticing the heavy tyre marks and threatening equipment all around. This time the Farrago has noticed the smaller print. That the deal ties UK to EU regulations, despite Boris’s puffery. Boris and the ERG Tories have their eye on deregulation, where foreign companies can join the buccaneering sprint of the freshly repositioned UK and benefit from a loosening of certain inconvenient restrictions. It can be made to sound glamorous to the voters too so that they dont notice that they are racing to the bottom.
So it's dangerous days ahead as the Get It Done brigade wax lyrical about their relief that Boris has Got It Over The Line. Don’t confuse with facts. This is a matter of national pride. Cummings knew that a simple respray was all that was possible in the limited renegotiation time.
If Boris is a conventional scorpion, then maybe Cummings is more like a whip variety. Whip spiders and scorpions will lash out unexpectedly to stun and grab their prey. They don’t even have stings in their tails, but I suppose Mr Cummings has the armed police force on speed dial to handle any little irregularities.
A well-known variant of the whip scorpion is the Charon. Named, if I remember correctly from Boy’s World comics, after that oarsman who ferried souls to Hades. It would explain Cummings’ wry smile.
I decided to go through the Apps that were on the iMac, to check if any others needed updating after Catalina. It was a useful exercise, because I found about a dozen or two four that were no longer needed.
Most surprising was Aperture, which has been left stranded as a 32 bitter. I've shunted everything across onto Adobe Lightroom, so it really didn't matter. Salutary to think that Apple would jettison one of its original 'big apps' in this way though.
I also had an old version of Ableton (I have the latest too). The no-longer-needed AdobeApplicationManager. A version of Apple's database builder Bento, which has been replaced. Then there was the old version of the Boom sound manager and an old version of Dragon Dictate.
Some alpha releases (oops) and a pile of Garmin utilities which have been superseded. A couple of screen recorders (I use IshowU for this) and a few bigger league Apple programs comprising Logic Node, MainStage, Remote Desktop Connection and Xcode - all of which have been superseded.
Then there was the old Mindjet (scrapped by me) and a few Mpeg and H264 converters, which have long since been superseded. FL Studio has been replaced and I've a current licence - which leaves just a few bibs and bobs to worry about.
Magic Bullet - looked bleak but actually Photolooks still works. I expect I have already got a licence and just not got around to downloading it - I'll try it in Lightroom in a minute. Final Draft - already updated, Yummy FTP - already updated and Scrivener - where I did have to pay new money for the update.
Net result, I've finally cleansed about 50 programs. I reckon its the first big piece of actual Apple systems management I've had to do in about five years, and it comprised spotting each app with a no-go sign, considering my action and then mostly dragging them to the bin. Hasty test picture shift tilted in Magic Bullet
I haven't participated in NaNoWriMo for several years, although my heritage goes right back to 2007 and I've part written seven(!) novels in that time. 
