Close Shaves and Books Without Ends

I may not have turned up many exciting or funny news articles this week, but I have achieved something - 7 out of 7 in the BBC's Quiz of the Week! I do believe it's the first time I've managed it. Okay, okay, 3 or 4 of the answers were educated (lucky) guesses, but even so, I reserve the right to brag about it for the rest of the day.
The book that shall not be named is still dragging on. I'm 80% through it so I can't give up, but worryingly I have now started dreaming about the wretched thing. There is little to love about either the setting or the characters, so visiting it in my sleep is more nightmare than dream. But I will finish it, I will!
At least tonight I can distract myself by looking for the Asteroid 2012 DA14 (why couldn't they call it Bob, or Wilbur?). This is the asteroid that will make a very close pass, being some 17000 miles away. 17000 miles sounds a long way but given that we have satellites further out than that, the excitement in the astronomy world is perhaps understandable. I just hope they got their sums right!

Influential Reading

It's another boring news day, or perhaps I should say, it's another bad news day. The lighter articles comprise photo montages of cute animals looking adoringly at each other (they're probably assessing how best to eat each other) along with the usual 'romantic' proposals and twee love stories. Well, I suppose it is Valentine's Day.
The writing has been a huge labour this week. I suspect it's a reaction to the book I'm currently reading, which I won't name as I would find it hard to be complimentary, but it's very dark and the plot is absurd. I'm persevering with it out of sheer bloody-mindedness.
Anyway, it's beaten my sense of humour into gibbering submission and, knowing how my writing is influenced by what I read, my next book will definitely have to be a comedy.
All suggestions welcome!

Women at Work (and Play)

The BBC has released the results of a 'survey' conducted by a panel of judges to decide which women are the most powerful. Now, I'm sure it's an oversight, but my name didn't feature anywhere on the list. I suspect restricting themselves to the top 100 may be pertinent, it was probably decided that plummeting the depths of the billionths would be altogether too time consuming. If you're interested the full list is available on the BBC's website, and pretty much every other news site in the UK.
Meanwhile, perhaps indicating why I shall never feature on any such esteemed list, my haphazard exploration of the new tablet continues. As promised, I have been using it for work as well as play utilising the very useful Polaris Office. I spent a pleasant forty five minutes in a café the other day, slurping a rapidly cooling pot of tea while I typed out a plan of action for Billy 3. Spending too much time with my imaginary friends does get a little stifling so being amongst living people was a refreshing change, and productive too. Having seen how useful the tool is, I've continued using it for my planning at home and I'm hopeful it will speed progress of the third book.
And then to play. A visit to our gorgeous daughter at the weekend resulted in a list of 'must have' games for Android. I'm not certain about some of them, but 'Cut the Rope' and '100 Floors' have been keeping me amused ever since, though he who fixes the computer has complained about the constant muttering and exasperated sighing. In my defence some of those levels are pretty tricky.

New Week, New Story

There's a new story on Quirky Tales website today. Inspired by a challenge set by Richard. 'Keeping Pace' is the story of one man's struggle to keep up with modern technology. I'm seeing a worrying echo of myself in one of the two characters in the story. No prizes for guessing which!
Hope you enjoy it.

Road Block

The three point turn, stuff of nightmares for every learner driver, the careful application of clutch and brake, stopping just before the kerb without ever actually touching it. Ah yes, in some ways it's worse than the hill start, which I recall doing in my old Mini on a ridiculously steep hill the planners had surely built into the town's fabric purely for the purposes of torturing learner drivers.
But that pales into insignificance compared to the situation a Naples driver found himself in. He was apparently attempting to turn his car around in a very narrow and seemingly quiet street. It was a tricky manoeuvre involving a good deal of shunting back and forth, but at least there was no-one else around. Until the cars started queueing up. And then the convoy of motorbikes. And then of course there was the church procession. It all started to get a bit Italian after that.
I do wonder why he was trying to turn the car in such a tight space, and why he kept turning the wheels the wrong way, but I also feel incredibly sorry for him. The manoeuvre would have been stressful enough in the first place, without the whole town turning out to observe, advise and ultimately heckle.

Two Minute Round Up

Currently in the news: it perhaps comes as no great surprise that a politician has admitted perverting the course of justice, though he was at pains to point out his original misdemeanour took place ten years ago - not sure that makes it any better really but he seemed to think it was important.

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The president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has offered to be launched into space. I imagine there will be a queue of world leaders lobbying to be allowed to light the touchpaper, but all credit to him. I can't picture the British prime minister volunteering to be 'sacrificed by the scientists', though I can picture the queue of hard-up Brits lobbying to comply.

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In New Zealand a tourist had all his holiday money stolen when he stopped at a beauty spot to admire the view. The thief is reported to have been a parrot who flew through the open window of the unfortunate tourist's campervan and snatched his cash. Police are not hopeful of apprehending the offender, at least, not while they're still all rolling around on the floor laughing.

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Richard III was buried beneath a Leicester car park. Obviously it wasn't a car park at the time but even so, it's a pretty ignoble end. And how would you feel knowing you'd been parking your Ford (other makes are available, I chose Ford because it's quick to type but of course a Lamborghini, Volkswagen etc. would work equally well) on top of Richard III?

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And finally, on the subject of car parks, Network Rail had cordoned off one of their car parks in Edinburgh in order to do resurfacing work. But it would seem that when the owner of one Mercedes (again, other makes are available, bad parking is by no means the preserve of Mercedes) arrived to see his usual car park cordoned off he decided to shift the barriers and park there anyway. Well, you know how it is, you use the same car park every day favouring the same spot each time, you get attached to it, it's hard to imagine parking anywhere else. Exasperated workers decided to carry on regardless leaving the car on its own little island, but they were gracious enough to build ramps to facilitate the rescue of the vehicle.

New Toy!

We've got a new toy: a shiny new Samsung tablet. It's all the wise two's fault because they bought themselves tablets and were showing them off the other weekend. Actually I should probably own up here, we had been discussing buying a new laptop so I could play the new Sim City but I was balking at making such a sizeable dent in our savings just to play one game. A tablet was a much cheaper option and has access to all manner of games from the app stores. So when we saw the wise two's new toys our minds were made up.
So far I've ploughed through two hidden object games (The Secret of Grisly Manor, and The Lost City), gone several rounds of Sudoku, blundered through various rounds of Mahjong, and I've even tried my hand at bridge building (Bridge Constructor). Sadly I'm astonishingly bad at the last - the bridge building world has missed nothing in me.
All this is just my way of excusing myself from my blogging responsibilities for the last few days - I do so love new toys! However, normal service shall now resume. The tablet will be firmly tucked out of sight until the evening. On with the writing. I'm currently working on the final instalment of the Boldre Wood Trilogy, as well as looking for new material for the third QT Anthology. In fact, the new tablet could be a boon with the latter as I plan on using it in the local coffee shops on my inspiration hunts. See, it's not all play, honest.