Long time between blogs but I've been frantic trying to get another book finished, get rid of those strange re-occurring typos in my others, formatting all kinds of new things and to top it off receiving graciously a neighbour and her kids (and lovely jack Russell) nearly every day as they sold their house. Glad to help out such good friends but it was so hard to get on with anything. She kept saying that she wouldn't disturb us; just sit on our front porch, yeah sure, as if we'd leave a woman and children out for what could be hours in savage heat, sorry to the dog, a good friend too, he had to stay out in the shade on the porch with a big bowl of fresh water. They've moved now to a house that I can only describe as I bit of a project but in a very hankered after area here, all horse boxes and vineyards.
So I finally finished my next book Nothing Gained and just waiting to see if my "normal" book ie one that is not set in the great universe beyond, but this scary one is liked. It is perhaps for those who valiantly tried to like Flawed Gods and failed and never told me, still it is much nicer all round to be told someone likes it, as long as they mean it. Can't wait for some feedback for the least complicated book I've ever written.
Our house is in a bit of a mess, for as well as our neighbour and the kids spending a lot of time here, we had a few tradesman in to fix things, some of which have been waiting years. The first was the electrician, a close friend of our above ex-neighbours, one of those soul matches, a man of unusual spiritually, we quickly became friends and he was a great electrician to boot. There was so much to do we saw him a couple of times a week for about 3, we kinda miss him, but will see him again at parties in the house above. We had a plumber too (a friend of the electrician) for a couple of things and a roof plumber to install a couple of what I call whirly-giggs. I cleaned, put everything back as best I could but work called, and now I was only disturbed, or had to go out with the "girls" for lunch, occasionally. So I got going at last and finished that book and caught up with all the other household chores; paperwork and tidying. My hubby has always treated me as the "Mrs Secretary Lady" ( to quote a very tall Arabian Secretary to someone important) I've tried to teach hubby to file but it's still left neatly in a cubby hole for me to do, you are so good at all this he says...grrrr.
So exhausted, after catching up with everything else, including great mounds of shredding, yesterday I actually watched TV while I drank a cuppa. I can't watch crap it's like torture to me, the times I've had to squirm at a friend's place, while they extol the virtues of something or other on the TV, me with a smile fixed on my face and my secret longings to say what a load of....So I tend to watch BBC World for lunch and beverages, no blingy silliness there- just great discussions, elegant news production, no crap, no controlled to suit Murdoch news.
I was only going to stay watching as long as there was something in my cup but I had to stay until the end of A good man in Rwanda: “This is the story of the bravest man I’ve ever met”, via @BBCNewsMagazine http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26793157 … -
I wept hard - not just shed a tear as many of us do for the terrors of our world. I remembered Rwanda's terror but it was a while ago and it had slipped a little from my memory. This was an excellent documentary from a good BBC journalist about a Muslim UN peacekeeper from Senegal called Capt. Mbaye Diagne he was full of goodness, bravely saving the lives of so many who now recalled what he did to save their lives while Rwanda went mad and the countries of the West did nothing, when they could have saved a few of the 800,000 who were brutally slaughtered in yet another human blood-surge and he was angry; many western countries could have stopped most of it and did what he could; what one brave man could, using his charm and smile to save the lives of many. I wept hard.
Then after another hard day at the chores again I watched something that didn't make me weep, but made me despair at the monsters so many humans are, as if they can't evolve past the ancient man who needed these cruel alpha male emotions to survive, when he had to pit himself against all nature, the survival of the fittest gene that is now so often a hindrance if we want to get to the next level.
I've mentioned this brave, kind man before too Simon Reeve, no pretty photo-shots with cuddly animals here he tells it as it is, things we need to know.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03q9r9n, sorry can't seem to get a viable link was shown in Feb in UK, so see the Tea Trail with Simon Reeve. Choice between free trade and the female tea-pickers at Unilever who if they complain about low wages will have to take to working on the streets!
What can I say.....only that I wish the Varan actually existed and they would come back and tweak those ancient genes and so enable those men (and women) with only the old genes, the screw everyone else while I get rich and powerful and take all the women ones, but without the modern genes of cooperation and fairness needed to make this planet viable for our future. No doubt some nerd tinkering with what makes us has already worked out how, we just need the payload.
Do I feel better now getting that off my chest? Not really, but can really see why mystics sit in caves or take to monasteries, it just all got too much to cope with. didn't it guys and gals? Perhaps that's why we writers like to sit in our study caves too.
So I finally finished my next book Nothing Gained and just waiting to see if my "normal" book ie one that is not set in the great universe beyond, but this scary one is liked. It is perhaps for those who valiantly tried to like Flawed Gods and failed and never told me, still it is much nicer all round to be told someone likes it, as long as they mean it. Can't wait for some feedback for the least complicated book I've ever written.
Our house is in a bit of a mess, for as well as our neighbour and the kids spending a lot of time here, we had a few tradesman in to fix things, some of which have been waiting years. The first was the electrician, a close friend of our above ex-neighbours, one of those soul matches, a man of unusual spiritually, we quickly became friends and he was a great electrician to boot. There was so much to do we saw him a couple of times a week for about 3, we kinda miss him, but will see him again at parties in the house above. We had a plumber too (a friend of the electrician) for a couple of things and a roof plumber to install a couple of what I call whirly-giggs. I cleaned, put everything back as best I could but work called, and now I was only disturbed, or had to go out with the "girls" for lunch, occasionally. So I got going at last and finished that book and caught up with all the other household chores; paperwork and tidying. My hubby has always treated me as the "Mrs Secretary Lady" ( to quote a very tall Arabian Secretary to someone important) I've tried to teach hubby to file but it's still left neatly in a cubby hole for me to do, you are so good at all this he says...grrrr.
So exhausted, after catching up with everything else, including great mounds of shredding, yesterday I actually watched TV while I drank a cuppa. I can't watch crap it's like torture to me, the times I've had to squirm at a friend's place, while they extol the virtues of something or other on the TV, me with a smile fixed on my face and my secret longings to say what a load of....So I tend to watch BBC World for lunch and beverages, no blingy silliness there- just great discussions, elegant news production, no crap, no controlled to suit Murdoch news.
I was only going to stay watching as long as there was something in my cup but I had to stay until the end of A good man in Rwanda: “This is the story of the bravest man I’ve ever met”, via @BBCNewsMagazine http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26793157 … -
I wept hard - not just shed a tear as many of us do for the terrors of our world. I remembered Rwanda's terror but it was a while ago and it had slipped a little from my memory. This was an excellent documentary from a good BBC journalist about a Muslim UN peacekeeper from Senegal called Capt. Mbaye Diagne he was full of goodness, bravely saving the lives of so many who now recalled what he did to save their lives while Rwanda went mad and the countries of the West did nothing, when they could have saved a few of the 800,000 who were brutally slaughtered in yet another human blood-surge and he was angry; many western countries could have stopped most of it and did what he could; what one brave man could, using his charm and smile to save the lives of many. I wept hard.
Then after another hard day at the chores again I watched something that didn't make me weep, but made me despair at the monsters so many humans are, as if they can't evolve past the ancient man who needed these cruel alpha male emotions to survive, when he had to pit himself against all nature, the survival of the fittest gene that is now so often a hindrance if we want to get to the next level.
I've mentioned this brave, kind man before too Simon Reeve, no pretty photo-shots with cuddly animals here he tells it as it is, things we need to know.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03q9r9n, sorry can't seem to get a viable link was shown in Feb in UK, so see the Tea Trail with Simon Reeve. Choice between free trade and the female tea-pickers at Unilever who if they complain about low wages will have to take to working on the streets!
What can I say.....only that I wish the Varan actually existed and they would come back and tweak those ancient genes and so enable those men (and women) with only the old genes, the screw everyone else while I get rich and powerful and take all the women ones, but without the modern genes of cooperation and fairness needed to make this planet viable for our future. No doubt some nerd tinkering with what makes us has already worked out how, we just need the payload.
Do I feel better now getting that off my chest? Not really, but can really see why mystics sit in caves or take to monasteries, it just all got too much to cope with. didn't it guys and gals? Perhaps that's why we writers like to sit in our study caves too.