Carrot soup and other inspirational flavours.

Another not so aptly titled blog entry but in some ways it’s correct.

I should start by saying that this is definitely not a cookery blog, but there may be a hint of that as we go along, much like today. If you manage to read all of today’s spouting there will indeed be a recipe at the end for the titular carrot soup.

This week has been quite tiresome, not in a bad way if that even makes sense, just in the sense that everything has been tiresome and necessary to do even the enjoyment of these things seemed to be missing something. What could it be I asked myself every day the same thing, lack of time, even though the clocks would indicate otherwise, then it dawned on me. Procrastination! Yes that killer of productivity that we all enjoy so much, like eating ice-cream, it is enjoyable, but is it productive? A glass of wine? Oh my yes I’d love one, relaxing in your favourite chair sipping and savouring the wine perhaps some delightful meaningless banter that everyone laughs at, smiles all around the room.

All such pleasant things but, what are you doing? Enjoying yourself, forging new friendships, reinforcing old ones. As endearing as these things are they have one thing in common, eaters of time!

Finding the right balance can be a problem and so today I realised that I had neglected things, cooking was one of them and so off to the kitchen to be creative with soup. My book! My writing! I protested, a pointless thing to do as arguing with yourself rarely brings coherent results. As the onions were sweating in the pan (rather like myself in our current season), as I chopped carrots, the words and images for the book started to swirl around in my head and then arrange themselves neatly like the cubes of carrot on the chopping board. Then of course I threw them into the pan and swirled them round whereupon they disintegrated into the mixture and my ideas also became dissarrayed. Adding a spoonful of thyme to the mixture, its sweet aroma wafted up and hit my senses, calming, ordering adding structure once again but again the structure was wrong. Simply one word after another will not do! Adding the stock and stirring it all up, the swirling pools of vegetables and herbs formed little pockets that flowed and merged into a fluid wholeness that was the makings of a hopefully nourishing soup, I turned down the heat, replaced the lid and headed for the computer and applied all that I had learned from this process to my continuing story. Will the recipe turn out well? The proof will be in the reading.

The soup finished and consumed felt good in my stomach.

Cream of carrot soup.

1 medium Onion chopped

5 large carrots diced or roughly chopped

1.5 ltrs of stock or water plus stock cubes etc Or 1 lt  if using next ingredient.

0.5 ltr milk (semi skimmed for my diet)

2 Spoons of white cornflour

1 teaspoon  Thyme

Quarter of a teaspoon of curry powder (Yes, Really.)

Half a teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper.

The method.

Heat a little oil in a deep saucepan add the onions and fry on a low heat for 6-10 minutes.

Add the diced carrot and the herbs/spices. turn up the heat and fry for a few minutes more.

Add the stock and boil until the carrot is sort or as I did until the liquid had reduced by almost a third. Remove from the heat and blend, I use a stick mixer. At this point mix the cornflour with the milk and add to the soup. Return to the heat and bring back to the boil slowly. Eat!

A mere mortal.

Today just hours before the grim realisation that I am just a mere mortal, I never thought I was a god per se but obviously overestimated my ability or underestimated the task I had set for myself, perhaps vastly would have been a good word to have used here also. The task was to write my “Short Story” The Digital Rainbow on the fly without a draft or a story bible or in fact any record except for the ever growing document itself, standing at a mere 5000 or so words, not so many in relative terms, War and peace contains over 560,000 in the English version and then Hemingway’s “For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.” at six (Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/1305285.)

Seemingly an easy thing to do, not so I find, as all weekend I have been…..well,erm….. relaxing, spending time with friends and trying to start the next chapter. Storyline clear as crystal in my head, no doubts about the direction in which to go. The problem? Details, details, details. More specifically 2 rather than a multitude. The solution? A piece of software I could run on my computer and plug myself into and the story in my head would be automagically  typed out for me complete with any pretty images that would assist in telling the story, sadly this is still lacking from our arsenal of technological triumphs.

There are, however, some excellent pieces of software to create a story bible, which I dismissed as being too time consuming, not worth the effort etc etc. What a fool! And so realising my “NOOB” error I return humbled to the computer to at least get some kind of summary structured to aid my failing synapses when neccessary.

Of course the comparisons quoted here are pointless and just there to give extreme examples for us mere mortals to consider when setting ourselves a task and also to take heed of the advice we receive from those who went before us. Remember advice is only bad when it doesn’t work.

 

Gloomy Saturday

Just the title puts you off, right? Why would you read something with a title like that? Well perhaps you were hooked from the moment you saw it, perhaps gleefully thinking someone had a worse day than you or maybe the opposite, perchance you thought “Oh my, I wonder what happened to this poor guy/gal.” Well, sorry if you fell for either of those reasons, today has in fact been quite a pleasant day full of nice relaxing weekend pastimes, nothing to write home about some might say but that’s more or less what I’m doing here.

The day started early, or at least I assume so, I finally got out of bed at 8:30 ish and proceeded with the normal stuff,  coffee, washer load of clothes prepared and then more coffee (decaff of course). Then a little shopping, new shoes, strings for the guitar and new capo as my previous one has gone AWOL, maybe adorning someone else’s guitar accessory bag or lost in the murky depths of my room, only to be discovered when I finally stop procrastinating and get round to cleaning it. I could do it now but it’s so much more interesting to be writing about it than doing it, this is not necessarily true for all things he says gleefully holding a half full glass of red wine to his lips.

Then after a quick lunch off to the studio to meet up with the band minus one, who is currently in “The village”, which sounds foreboding but I’m guessing it’s at least ten times better than it sounds and a hundred times better than the film of the same name (IMHO). Great times getting together with the guys for a drink and to jam a few tunes and introduce much needed new ideas and songs, more importantly catching up with each other and chilling out, a complete misnomer at the moment due to the Spanish Summer being upon us and then we cram ourselves like sardines into a room with no aircon and rock out for a few hours. At this point I discover that it’s a mistake to wear shoes/trainers or more or less any kind of footwear without socks if you’re not used to it, ouch! But blisters aside it’s been a great day, and writing about it has increased my appreciation of it immeasurably.

If you’ve got this far and are still wondering why the title? here’s why……..It’s actually been gloomier than this pretty much all day, so I was surprised to see this break in the cloud cover.

Bye for now.

Things that go Grrr!

    After my recent bout of tendonitis in my left hand put a bit of a block on my writing I was quite happy today when for the second consecutive day I was free from pain and today being relatively work free I decided I would continue the story.

Happily sauntering along on my way back from the office and thinking about what would come next in the gripping tale of the Szivarans I almost broke out into a little whistle as I smiled to myself on this fine hot Zaragoza day, However upon reaching the lift in my apartment block I was surprised to find said elevator’s interior shrouded in cardboard. Instantly recognising the trademark sign of “The Workmen” my cheerful demeanor collapsed in on itself almost to the point of no return. The approach to the fourth floor seemed as normal, lift clunking perplexingly as always, distant voices on the second floor belonging to the people who presumably live in the hallway, they’re always there talking! The lift went through it’s usual slow motion dance that precedes it stopping with a jolt that propels the temporary inhabitant towards the ceiling and slightly to one side, exiting the lift all was quiet until I opened the door to my abode whereupon I was greeted by the sound of the infernal machinery that was currently chewing up an apartment on the third floor in preparation for who knows what.

    It’s amazing really that in a country where people have a habit of sleeping at a more or less set hour and where they live almost in each others pockets that we don’t have any quieter machines for doing alterations, but more to the point why does it always sound like the entire inside of the building is removed when they do it? is it really necessary to remove all interior walls floors and ceilings to alter your apartment?

Now perhaps people think I’m exaggerating, Perhaps there maybe a hint of that here but I guarantee that if you get the chance to speak to someone in Spain who has experienced a neighbours renovation of their dwelling they will wholeheartedly agree with my comments.

    The upshot then is that work on the story will be a little delayed, although perhaps later today I will have some silence and of course this evening after my class. Rant over………..For now.

The Key Revisited

Many many years ago I started to write a story titled The Mandragorian Key, sadly the original document is lost. Upon researching the title on the internet I’ve found several names of things like a demon in the highly popular Doctor Who series, who has a name very similar to Mandragorian so I’ll very likely rename it to something else. I took a break this evening from the main story to begin reproducing the aforementioned story and so I present it here for your consideration.

The Key

How she hated these days. The incessant rain, the dull grey sky, the dull grey light that barely penetrated the stained glass window of the museum and even when it did it seemed to have drained all the colour out of everything, where once was a deep sensuous red highlight on the mahogany desk there is a deathly ancient bloodstain, conjuring images of unspeakable rituals and rites from which only one gained any pleasure, even the vibrant yellow garland seemed to turn into a withered and jaundiced representation of itself. Oh how she hated these dull grey days but worst of all she hated the dull grey people that came on these days to shelter from the worst of the rain. They came in droves almost seeming to spring to life from the drops of rain that touched the ground, with every splish and splash or ripple came another and another. Dull grey anonymous faces with dull grey anonymous thoughts and their dull darkened eyes  partly hidden by umbrellas or hats or deep frowns across their foreheads. These philistines who entered these hallowed walls of ancient knowledge, how dare they!?

They dared because they were anonymous grey people, transported by need into this place but not to learn or look or even, dare I say, peruse a playful pastel by Picasso nor consider a collection of Celtic coins.

Cathy stood looking across the huge space of the entrance hall to the museum with utter contempt at the gathering of people who had inundated the building at the first sign of the storm and prayed it would be over soon. She guessed more or less correctly that ninety nine point nine percent of them had only come for shelter, but was completely unaware that the remaining point one percent was slowly and nervously making his way towards her desk with it’s vampiric looking bloodstain deepening by the second as the storm thundered ever louder above them. She had already mentally transported herself away to foreign lands and was currently digging up an ancient metal artefact that looked remarkably like a miniature representation of a huge gateway that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a castle somewhere in the Scottish highlands. This anachronism in her daydream was puzzling as she was quite sure she was in Egypt brought her almost back to reality then the sudden raising of all the hair on her body and instantaneous clap of thunder as the museum was struck by lightning made her transportation complete and she found herself staring into the face of Mr. 0.1%. She blinked at him several times perhaps expecting him to disappear the same way he had appeared, heralded by a huge clap of thunder, which of course did not happen.

 

All’s well that ends well

  All’s well that ends well. A play that was apparently penned by the immortal bard sometime around 1604-1605, in truth I’m not at all familiar with it except for the title which just happens to be the same as today’s blog post. Shockingly I’m not fond of Shakespeare at all perhaps due to being force fed his works from a young age, I suppose I’m considered a heretic by many for my views but everyone is entitled to their opinion, well mostly.

The title could be considered a misnomer of sorts as really it’s about my day today, which is far from over and also about my story, which is also far from complete. On to the events of today. I arrived at work at 8.15am and prepared to give class i.e. sat at the table with my books ready browsing the net on my tablet. 8.45 am arrived without so much of a glimmer of a student. Slightly miffed at getting up early for apparently nothing I checked my timetable on the computer which looked blankly up at me revealing that there  should be no class at 8.30am sigh. Knowing better than my electronic counterpart I waited and sure enough My student arrived “Promptly” at 9.07am. Class finished at 10am straight to the next one which was today only until 11am due to a Doctor’s appointment at the strange time of 11:54am. Needless to say I went in 30 minutes after said time, sat for 3 minutes and left prescription in hand, a happy customer. This last part is the real “ending well” part.

As for progress with the Digital Rainbow, progress is a little slow due to my strangely increasing workload (also a very positive thing at this juncture). The normally lean Summer months may turn out to be bounteous in respect of earnings rather than free time and so for this reason my posts may be a little slower than of late but perhaps better written rather than hurriedly penned as I’m sure Shakespeare was never guilty of doing.

The story now stands at just over 3000 words and although apparently there is no agreed maximum or minimum for a story. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer’s of America give this table for entries to it’s Nebula Award. Acording to this I’m almost halfway to writng a short story but it seems these definitions are never clear cut. That’s all for now.

Novel	over 40,000 words
Novella	17,500 to 40,000 words
Novelette	7,500 to 17,500 words
Short story	under 7,500 words

Keep them Bloggies Rollin’

Ok so I’m still blogging after 2 weeks, something of a record for me, still finding my way around and getting to grips with how eveything works too. Not sure if I really needed to create 3 seperate blogs for the different things I’m currently up to but I guess it’s kind of logical to keep some things apart.

Of course as I’m learning the ropes as it were there are likely to be many errors and edits but so far I’m happy with how things are shaping up. Not being creative in the web department means my blogs have the bog standard look that’s available but then do we really need fancy borders and little doodah gadgets splattered around the screen distracting us from the task in hand? I think not! After all the important thing should be the content and not how many widgets, applets or gadgets you have adorning your blog eating up more megabites of cyberwotsit and increasing upload/download time. It’s true they look nice, well sometimes, but more often than not they are confusing and increasingly unfathomable symbols that bear no relation to function or logic.

Yes you guessed it, I am indeed of the older generation, the ones who balk at using a remote control for the new DVD player etc etc. Now don’t get me wrong, I love technology and am constantly amazed by the progress we have made since I was a lad but nowadays it seems we create something and then need to find a use for it.

But I’ve finally found a use for blogging, namely unleashing my train of thoughts on an unsuspecting public that potentially gives me an audience of billions, judging by today’s television programmes I have a chance to entertain a few people at least. My advice is turn off the T.V. sidle on over to the P.C. fire it up and have a good read of something. What can it hurt?

Weekend Snaps

Weekend Snaps.

Sitting in my room today trying to get to grips with a heirachical structure for my notes to the Digital rainbow and the also the heat, not neccesarily in that order, I decided it was time to get back on the bike and get some much needed exercise and fresh air. Jumping not so nimbly onto my bike I realised with a grimace that my knee is still giving me some gyp, hey ho no time for grumbling. The cycle down to the water park at the expo site was uneventful until I reached the bridge pavilion, an oddly designed bridge, looking completely out of place where it is even with all of the other modern structures around it. My plan was to finally take some pictures of it even though I find it an atrocity, that’s being kind. So first shot taken and as I finish taking the shot 4 people with skateboards arrive at the bridge obviously to cross and have some fun in the expo site on the other side. I start pushing my bicycle to the entrance whereupon I heard a voice over a hidden loudspeaker system announcing “No skateboarding allowed!” So, they pick up their skateboards and proceed to enter, again the voice announces “Not even if you carry them!”. Ok not strictly those words as he spoke in Spanish but you get the idea. The youngsters exit, I enter pushing my trusty carriage only to be told no bicycles! So I follow the skateboarders to the other bridge. This monstrosity of a bridge is manned obviously by cameras, loudspeakers and some form security man, for what reason I ask? It’s not used very much, has nothing inside and exit into open space. From a safety point of view I understand no cycling or skateboarding but conducting yourself in a nice fashion on foot carrying skateboards or pushing bikes wouldn’t seem out of place or any trouble. Rant over so here’s the one photo I took perhaps not the best but I didn’t think it warranted much effort and after the forementioned events even less so, in fact I’ll probably never go inside it out of protest. Needless to say that the rest of the afternoon/evening went without trouble apart from the old knee grumble……grumble…….mutter.

Rebirth

So, finally I’ve got the blogging bug, perhaps a little late but better late than never so the old saying goes, My guess is that I’ll update this much less than my other blog http://thedigitalrainbow.wordpress.com/ Which is where my story resides. I’m still dubious about writing it in blog form, but then what can it hurt? And of course writing for pleasure is something that I’ve sadly left for too long and perhaps gotten rusty (using American English here just shows something amiss).

Having lived in Spain for just a touch over 6 years has made me highly aware of a few things, the first of which is that when you use a “dumbed down”(Not a phrase I’m keen on) version of your own language for such a great length of time it does indeed affect the language you speak and sometimes your understanding of what would once have been an average everyday conversation, hence this project of writing is in part to prevent the decline of my once wonderfully rich vocabulary and also to hopefully abate the decline of my dwindling cognitive processes. In short it’s my fight back against the slow insidious effects of getting old. Perhaps I can age gracefully or at least with a modicum of respectfullness. Time will tell.

Already I’ve learned that trying to write and publish a story in relative real time is nigh impossible and fraught with dangers. Spelling mistakes, omissions and then afterthoughts. Interruptions are perhaps the deadliest thing of, once the process of putting your train of thoughts onto paper as it were,  any distraction is enough can completely destroy a whole paragraph. For this reason I limit my posts to what I can comfortably put down without fear of being disturbed by neighbors, flatmates, mosquitos or the occasional rumble of thunder and the hope of taking photos of the ensuing light show that it portents.

Now my thoughts are on wine and food so I’ll stop here before it descends into random thoughts, possibly alcohol driven ones.