Oh My! Iddle-widdle baby ducks!

Bumblebees. In water. With stumpy little winglets and inturned toes.
I could just sit here and watch them for hours.

(Must fix camera)

Bad Timing in a Nice Neighbourhood

My diary has a note for Tuesday - "Town hall - Club license hearing"

A night club (aka "Champagne Bar") opened in our street a few months
ago, on the site of an old pub and snooker hall.

Our street is entirely residential, lined with pre-war council blocks
and mansion flats, housing hundred of residents of all ages, whose
windows face the club.
The club is right next door to a children's library and backs onto a
school.
There is very limited parking, and no public transport after 1pm.

So residents were alarmed when they learned that the owners of the
club had applied for a lap-dancing license and a 5am opening license 6
nights a week. When were they supposed to sleep? I don't hear the
club at night, I'm on the far side of the building, but my neighbours
do, and I was planning to attend to support them.

The lap dancing license was opposed and the application suspended - but
the late night application license continued, and looked likely to be
passed It turns out that the only grounds on which the council can
refuse the 5am opening license is the risk of serious crime and
disorder in the neighbourhood.
Not noise, not the rights of people in bedrooms 20, 30, 40 yards from
the club to an interrupted nights sleep, not the participation of a
community in decisions about the way their home neighbourhoods and
businesses should be supported and developed.

Only "Serious" crime and disorder.

I wonder if the murder of a customer in the doorway of the club 3
nights before the license hearing is serious enough?

Because that's why my street is festooned in incident tape this
morning, and why the library garden is being searched by forensic
teams in white-all-in ones this morning.

Ugh. Not nice.

There is too much light in this bar! - Midsummer, and uneasy slumbers.

At the stone caravan June and July are the season of the (almost)
midnight sun. It is possible to walk home through even the darkest part
of the oak wood at 11pm - the sun is below the horizon, but only in a
shallow dip, and light is still reflected over the hillside. And dawn
comes thundering up a few hours later.

But at least it is cool under the slate roof, and only the owls disturb the silence. (and I mean - really disturb - the owl in the
tree by my door hunts with a hoarse scream like a bull beneath the earth. The rocks seems to shake).

But this week I am in London, with a security light outside my bedroom window, and I cannot achieve blackout without also stifling the last
breath of air in a still room.
So I woke at 3, and stayed that way, listening to the traffic, and eventually creeping downstairs to drink tea and read.

I daren't shower and dress and go out - my flatmate (the evangelical) is a very light sleeper, and gets little enough rest as it is.
And there is no where to go at 3.30 anyway, not even a night bus to whisk me away.

I'm getting superstitious about talking about writing progress...

... particularly after the last two story structure collapses, but -I
feel that I might have finally got onto the endgame with the Ethiopian
script (now called "T'sion")

I now solutions to three of the biggest headaches;

- How Lily the Irish Hoyden and Michael the Ethiopia Public School Boy
end up in the highlands together at the end of Act 1

- Why Paul the anti-heroic academic is so highly motivated to get
back home to Europe

- Exactly what his guilty secret is.

These are the pebbles I've been tripping over all year; I knew these
things happened, just not exactly why, in a way I could show and not
tell.

Now, all I would have to do it but these events in the right order,
and I might be able to put this MF to bed at last.

But, after all these months, I am far to nervous to say so out loud,
in case I hex it.

And - the solution to my writer's block was... ?

Watching really well-made "popcorn" movies, with absolutely no
relevant political or historical content what so ever.
(In my case with a flask of iced gin and some pretzels, rather
than popcorn...)

Fantastic Writers Therapy!

Cheers!

It is reely, reely, reely difficult to concentrate on the second act...

... when you are sitting opposite a reely, reely, reely old guy reading
the Times and playing with the toys in his pocketses.

Seriously. Stop it.
They'll all still be attached when you get home to the privacy of your
own bathroom I promise.

[Fwd: Just back from Devon...

... where the heavens opened and a large portion of the Channel was

scooped up and dumped on my head.

Seriously my coat was 3 times heavier when I took it off than when I
put it on, and I had to wring out my hat in a basin.

I hate getting cold and wet in away from home summer because nothing
is geared up for comfort - the B&B, though wonderful, didn't have the
heating on (why would it - in June!) and it took a hot shower and lots
of coffee to stop the shivers.

In Paignton, while waiting for a train connection (a steam train
connection) I discovered a truly awesome fast food nightmare.

Battered Chip Shop Chips.

Lovely fat chips, parcooked, then dipped in a light batter before
being finished and served. The sample I had were deepfat heaven. I'd
have stayed for more, but at that point the ceiling in the chip shop
started to bulge and disintegrate under the apocalyptic rainfall, so
I slipped out to find a cup of tea in the station buffet instead.

At the station the locomotive was steaming happily - and so was I,
sitting in a little puddle in the (unheated) buffet.

This was my first ever steam train trip (this is honestly the only way
to make a train connection to Kingswear/Dartmouth), and what amazed me
most was the noise - or rather, the lack of it. With no electric
motors in the carriage the trip was silent except for the wonderful
"clickety-clack", and at station halts dead silence would fall, except
for the hiss of rain and steam. I saw a Sparrowhawk on a fence post,
but most of the view was lost in the cloud and water. (Did I mention
it was wet?)

At Kingswear I struggled up the land to the hotel, ankle deep in a new
formed stream, dragging the suitcase behind me.

Yet - just two hours later, the cloud had gone, the sky was blue, the
river dart was sparkling gold. Weird.

The lonely lament of the White Van Man

So, I'm sitting on the grass, in a park, enjoying the sun, when I hear
the lilting lament of my neighbour/

I'll call him White Van Man - I have no idea what he drives, although
I can guarantee that he does drive, and that he is "not a man to
tangle with"

He was 50 odd, and seemed to have been angry for most of that half
century.

Anyway, as the parakeets sang overhead, as children splashed in the
shallows, as lovers curled together in knots of content, WVM head
forth to his companion on the evils of Direct Debits. For 45
minutes. Non stop.

He had only two complaints - that he liked to pay what he owed, when
he owed it, and that the didn't like giving access to his account to
strangers - and he performed infinite variations on this his outrage.
For 45 minutes. A virtuoso performance, by any standard.

Meanwhile his companion, a comely lady with a patient sigh, laid out
the picnic, poured tea from a thermos, shifted as the shade of the
tree moved across the grass, and sighed, sympathetically when a
response was required of her.

Then - suddenly - the evil of direct debit was forgotten. Two tiny
figures had caught WVM's attention, two diminutive ladies, in ankle
length black dresses and shady white head dresses walked past, eating
ice-creams.

Here was a subject dear to WVM's heart - "what are they doing here", he spluttered, "in a English park, in England, all covered up like that. This was a Christian country,
after all - do they think they are ..."

His companion screwed the top back on the Thermos. "They're Nuns, dear"

"What?"

"I said - they're Nuns."

"But, what - " WVM spluttered, the natural flow of his spleen
disturbed, "what? Why are they here?"

"It's a convent, dear."

And she stood up, popped the rubbish in the nearest bin, and left.