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Okay, well, it’s all very nice to have a computer and all. In fact on my desk here, I have a computer, printer/scanner/fax, modem, wireless router, speakers, webcam, microphone, hi-fi, cassette recorder, USB extension, and desk light. Mission control, pretty much. It look pretty flash, I have to admit. The downside is that behind the desk there is all this.
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It’s a good thing no one ever looks there but me!
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I missed the theme last week so let me have a go at it this week. I didn’t want to do a list of 13 things about me all starting with the same letter; I suspect you read enough of those last week. So I decided to do a book list based on a letter chosen at random. I picked a book off my shelves and decided to look at page 83, line 8, third word, second letter. The third word in question was “she” which gave me H. I have used many H books in previous lists, so I can’t use them again, but even so I was able to find just enough. Quite a mixed bag. Here they are…..
13 Books With Titles Starting With The Letter H
A Republican sent this to me, so things must be bad...
Question: How many members of the Bush Administration does it take to change a light bulb?
Answer: TEN.
1. One to deny that a light bulb needs to be changed;
2. One to attack the patriotism of anyone who says the light bulb needs to be changed;
3. One to blame Clinton for burning out the light bulb;
4. One to tell the nations of the world that they are either for changing the light bulb or for eternal darkness;
5. One to give a billion dollar no-bid contract to Halliburton for a new light bulb;
6. One to arrange a photograph of Bush, dressed as a janitor and standing on a step ladder, under the banner "Bulb Accomplished";
7. One administration insider to resign and in detail reveal how Bush was literally "in the dark" the whole time;
8. Another one to viciously smear # 7;
9. One surrogate to campaign on TV and at rallies on how George Bush has had a strong light bulb-changing policy all along;
10. And finally, one to confuse Americans about the difference between screwing in a light bulb and screwing the country.
And after all is said and done, no one will notice that they never actually managed to change the light bulb.
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Last week we were asked to do a TT on the theme of places we have been to, but I’m afraid I didn’t see the instruction until I had already posted mine. So, just one week late, here is my list of…
Thirteen Places I Have Visited
Portmahommack on the north east coast of Scotland. We spent an Easter holiday here when I was a child. It was (probably still is) a charming little fishing port. We rented a cottage right up by the harbour – I think its the one marked in the photo – and during that 3 week period we explored all over the north of Scotland. On one of the last 
evenings there, there was a huge storm. My sister and I ran out of the house and were having a great time standing on the harbour wall in a howling gale, as huge waves crashed over us until my mother came out and in an utter fury ordered us back into the house. At the time we thought she was making a lot of fuss over nothing, but thinking back, and imagining seeing my own daughter doing that, I suspect Mum was terrified!
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Mousehole
(pronounced “mowzell”) This is another charming fishing village, at the other end of the UK. It’s in western Cornwall. We spent several Easter breaks here. I love Cornwall. Time was, I entertained thoughts of moving there, but I’m not the only one and the county is getting pretty crowded. It was here that I saw what many small boys like to imagine – my sister falling into a sewer! It’s ok – we fished her out.
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Ventimiglia I think that means “twenty miles” in Italian, because that is about the distance that this Italian coastal town is from the French border. 
We were spending our summer on the French Riviera and friends who were spending their summer in Italy asked us to join them for a few days. I remember it was very warm but windy, and after several weeks of seeing red, white and blue tricolours on every flagpole in France, I kept doing a double take at all the red, white and green ones there.
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Waikiki 
How could I not include this one? I was here for a week. Somewhere I never thought I’d go. I swam at Waikiki beach, and was surprised at how shallow it was. 100 yards out I could still walk on the bottom. Behind me was Diamond Head. Memories of the opening titles of a certain TV show. “Book ‘em, Dano!”
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Monastir During a 4 week holiday in Tunisia, in north Africa, we spent about ten days in this town. It was my first experience of Arab culture, and though there was quite
a bit of tourism it had not swamped the local way of life,
as I rather think it may have done by now, a couple of decades later. Tunisia is a secular state, of course, so there were hardly any women in burkhas, but we still used to hear the muezzin calling the faithful to the mosque every day, from the top of a minaret. I was very disappointed to find out it was a tape recording, played through a couple of big speakers! The town was very clean, and there was plenty to see, including (pictured) an old pirates’ fort dating back 300 years.
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Gozo This one of the three islands that make up the country of Malta, situated in the Mediterranean, about midway between Sicily and Libya. When we were there, there was not much to Gozo but small villages, 
one so-called town, an unspoilt rural life for the locals, lots of beaches and coves with hardly any tourists. So it was ironic that on the second day there we were in the local market and bumped into someone we knew from back in London!
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Waterville The loveliest part of Ireland, in my opinion, is County Kerry, and Waterville is a coastal town there. We were there once, on holiday with another family.
We explored the whole southwest corner of Ireland in a minibus big enough to hold both families (11 people in all). One of these days I am going to get my Dad’s collection of 8mm cine films which he took during those 2 weeks and have them converted to DVD, so we cam see them again.
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St. Paul de Vence This village in the south of France dates from the middle ages, and is still surrounded by a centuries old stone wall. These days homes there are very sought after and some of the hotels here are among the best in all of France, with 3 Michelin stars.
We did not visit often because my family has never been made of money, but occasionally we ate there. The house we were renting was across a valley from St Paul, so we used to see it from our patio every day. Once a year they have a night-time festival to commemorate the time the town was ransacked and burned by Saracens in the 12th century. They let off fireworks, followed by a pyrotechnic display that make it look as though the whole town is ablaze. Amazing!
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Labrador The full name of this Canadian province is Newfoundland and Labrador but every Labradorean I spoke to was at pains to point out to me that Labrador had nothing to do with Newfoundland, except in name. Some even wanted Labrador to break away and become a province in its own right. I stayed in Happy Valley, many years ago. Lots of nice people, and not too many amenities. There was only one TV channel there then (CBC) and every weekday at 3.00pm the whole town came to a halt to watch “The Edge Of Night”
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Bombay Yes, I know I should call it Mumbai, but that change had not happened when I was there. It is apparently the most modern city in India, but even so, 
alongside the new office blocks, and the majestic stone buildings that were built during the Raj, I saw unbelievable poverty too. India fascinated me. I can’t wait to go back and have another look.
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Grindelwald My one and only winter sports holiday (so far). We stayed in Wilderswil, in Switzerland, and did our ski-ing on the slopes at Grindelwald. That was a 30 minute drive away, along alpine roads, through the snow. I loved it, but we never went again. I don’t know why.
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Taipei The capital of Taiwan – the Republic of China, as it calls itself. I spent a few days here when I was on a round the word trip. At that time, I didn’t know anyone who had been here and didn’t know what to expect. I thought it was a rather lovely place. All the street signs were in Chinese, of course, and I didn’t find it hard to get lost! But I was never worried, not even at 4.00am, wandering the streets. I knew I’d be ok. I felt perfectly safe. I can remember to this day the sound of Mah-Jongg tiles clacking away coming through the open windows of so many houses I passed. People stay up very late there, it seems.
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Pacific Highway I was in San Francisco, and loved the place. I wanted to see what LA was like, and I decided not to fly but to drive down there, and the route I took was the Pacific Highway. I took my time, it was a wonderful day for it, and I am very glad I went that way. It was beautiful. In fact, the route to LA was far more attractive than LA itself, which was a bit of a sprawl.
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Thanks for all the comments about my last Thursday Thirteen. Most people managed to get a few of the movies, though no one managed all twenty-six. I would have been staggered if someone had! Anyway, as I promised some of you in replies to your comments, I am posting the answers to all 26. Anyone kicking themselves now?
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1 Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid
3 Die Hard
6 K-Pax
13 Bridget Jones: The Edge Of Reason
16 Magnum Force
17 Cabaret
21 The (First) Great Train Robbery
22 Stand By Me
23 Airplane!
25 The Graduate
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.... I’m cheating a bit. This is my TT #55, but I have been at it for 56 weeks. So…. since I missed one week I’m doing a double this week. Here are 26 lines from movies. See how many you can identify. You will look in vain for chick flicks or sword-and-sandal fantasy, but these are all mainstream movies that have made the progression from cinema to TV and VHS and/or DVD. Nothing obscure here. Have fun…
1. “Who are those guys?”
2. “You’re only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!”
3. “I read something about them in Time magazine.”
4. “Children, don’t buy drugs! Become a rock star and people will give them to you!”
5. “The sheriff is a nnnnn!”
6. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a beam of light to catch.”
7. “Let’s do some good!”
8. “Young people in love are seldom very hungry!”
9. “Some total penis.”
10. “If we bring a little joy into your humdrum lives, it makes us feel as though our hard work ain’t been in vain for nothin’.”
11. “What are you doing, Dave?”
12. “I suspect everyone; I suspect no one.”
13. “Surely everyone deserves a second chance.”
“Yes. Except Hitler.”
14. “Raspberry! Raspberry!”
15. “He was born in front of a live audience.”
16. “A man’s got to know his limitations.”
17. “Screw Maximillian!”
“I do, frequently.”
“So do I.”
18. “I don’t want my brother coming out of that toilet with just his dick in his hand.”
19. “There’s a hole in this cake!”
20. “Infamy, infamy! They’ve all got it in for me!”
21. “Find me a dead cat.”
22. “By the time we get there the kid won’t even be dead anymore.”
23. “No, I’ve been nervous before.”
24. “My God, you can see Gibraltar!”
25. “You’re trying to seduce me. Aren’t you?”
26. “Beauty killed the beast.”
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Have a look at this, while you still can. I don’t know how much longer this link will work, because I bet there are forces wanting to stop people seeing this. It’s an excerpt from a program shown an Al Jazeera and I am surprised they allowed it to be broadcast. The woman speaking plain common sense is called Wafa Sultan. Bearing in mind just how extreme some extremists can be, she is being very brave. What she says deserves as wide an audience as possible.
If you click this link, is should open in Windows media player. It takes a few seconds to load but it's worth the wait.
http://switch3.castup.net/cunet/gm.asp?ai=214&ar=1050wmv&ak=nul
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I found a new store the other day, or shop as I will always think of such places. It is in one of those strip malls that people seem to drive by all the time without ever stopping, and as it is fringed with trees you can never see what establishments are on offer there. I did, however, see there was a thrift store and on impulse I pulled in , to see if there was anything worth buying and then reselling on eBay for a few dollars profit. There was, and once I had bought it and put it in the car, I decided to see what else was there. The mall itself is L shaped, and some establishments front onto a side street. One of these was a little place that calls itself a “European Supermarket” Now I know Europe is smaller than the USA but even there the supermarkets aren’t that small! This place was smaller than my living room, but every shelf was crammed full with various European goodies. I should say, continental European (nothing British except Twinings tea bags), with a strong bias towards Eastern Europe. The proprietor is a Russian gentleman and so was at least one of his customers, because I heard them talking in that language. I bought myself something, as an indulgence really, and went to the counter to pay for it. Now, I took Russian in school for 2 years many, many centuries ago, but until this day I had never said anything in Russian to an actual Russian person. I remember very little, to be honest, other than a few words and sentences. I could have told him that I have a sister, or that the book is on the table, or I could have asked him for directions to the railway station (though I would not have understood his reply). Instead, I asked him how much my purchase was, and when I go the change I thanked him. Then we reverted to English and I asked him how long he had been in town, and how things were going. Four years. So how come I had never heard of this place, since it is only half a mile in a straight line from where I live? He said he never needs to advertise. Anyway, I shall be going back from time to time. I wished him goodbye in Russian, but he answered my “Na zdarovie” with “Hasta la vista, baby!” which I strongly suspect is not what they say to each other back in Minsk or Pinsk or Omsk.
This is what I bought myself. As I say, it was pure indulgence. I am not a chocolate addict, and I can go for days or even weeks without it but these caught my eye. A German confection consisting of chocolate shells, filled with light marshmallow on wafer base. Yes, you can get similar here but the ones in my local supermarket are far too sweet to be tasty. Damozel put it much better than I when she wrote about it, but European chocolate has far less sugar added than American chocolate, with the result that you can taste the chocolate, not just a lot of chocolate flavoured sugar. Ok, twelve of them in the box – that should keep me happy for about three weeks!
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Some weeks ago I listed a number of movies that we still own on VHS cassettes. Yes, dinosaur stuff, I know, and we will probably get round to replacing them all with DVDs in the fullness of time. Just in time, no doubt, for DVDs to become obsolete. Anyway, until that day arrives, we still own about 100 movies in that old format, and here are thirteen more of them.
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A few weeks ago, Grace over at Sandier Pastures did a fascinating TT about things she could have said, maybe wanted to say, but never actually did say. I thought this was a brilliant idea and so I have stolen it. Here is a list of thirteen things that I could have said at various stages in my life, but never did – probably just as well really. Some date back to the angst ridden teenage years, others are more recent, though there is nothing from my immediate past. Anyway I hope you enjoy….
...........Thirteen things I could have said, but didn’t!
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I know I have made a complete mess of this and I thank you all for pretending so sweetly that I haven’t.
Sometimes it is hard even to pretend that I agree with you.
I don’t know why you persist in calling her “a girl with spirit” when all she is is violent and abusive. When she can’t get her own way she destroys your property and assaults you in public. Your friends hate seeing you humiliated like this. You need to dump her right now.
We work together and because you are my boss I have to pretend to like you, but I think you are an over promoted buffoon who is completely out of touch with reality. I’d like to be your friend but I just can’t.
I’d rather be dating your sister.
You must be the only person in London who doesn’t know that your son is gay. Why do you keep trying to match him up with all these women he obviously isn’t interested in?
I’m sure you have no idea how happy I am every time I get an e-mail from you, and you probably never will know because I can’t tell you.
You are a boring, pompous old fart and you are talking a lot of superstitious drivel. I don’t want to waste my Sunday mornings sitting on this hard bench listing to this crap any more. There are so many other things I would rather be doing.
You are very kind and I wouldn’t hurt your feelings for anything, but you just can’t cook worth a damn!
I don’t know what this will do to our friendship, but your mother just made a pass at me.
If I know that each of you is cheating on the other, how come you haven’t found out?
Hey everyone, Mr XXXX is not the hero he makes out he is. He is the one who fucked up a whole week’s work, and it was me and my colleagues who actually put everything right again, no thanks to him. He just hovered about as we did it and is now trying to make everyone think he saved the day, and is hiding the fact that he caused the problem in the first place.
I can't prove it but I know for absolutely certain that you are helping yourself to the petty cash. One day I'll catch you !
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Yes, I have finally reached the end. I have finished the first draft of my work in progress, my second novel, called Where Is The Number? It has taken me about a year and a half, with several delays and interruptions, not to mention a fairly large dollop of procrastination. Anyway, a few hours ago I finally completed the last chapter and was able to write “The End” in big bold letters at the bottom of the last page. The word count is 112,063 which is the most I have ever written about anything. After a pause for breath, I can start on the edits and rewrites, but the hard part is over. I think I’ll pour myself a glass of something!
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Since I missed out one week, this TT means that I have been doing this meme for one whole year. And I have enjoyed every week of it! I notice that a lot of my fellow bloggers whom I have met through this site are writers, as am I in my own only-one-book-published-so-far way, so this list may interest them. While they and I struggle week after week, month after month, to finish a first draft, here is a list of authors who were able to write full length novels in six weeks, or in some cases considerably less. The bastards!
In spite of the success of Little Women, Louisa May Alcott and her family were desperate for money to live on and she wrote Little Men in just under three weeks. A few years later she wrote Eight Cousins, but she took somewhat longer over that – it took her almost five weeks.
The detective novel and thriller writer John Creasey wrote approximately 600 (yes, six hundred) novels, under his own name and a variety of pseudonyms. While he could sometimes take up to six weeks on a book, he did once manage to write two full length novels in six days. His own preference was to spend about twelve days on a book.
Daniel Defoe was one of the earliest novelists in the English language, and we have all heard of his Robinson Crusoe, which was extremely successful. To take advantage of this, he wrote a sequel, The Further Adventures Of Robinson Crusoe, in just under a month.
Some writers work best when they have to meet deadlines. It certainly helped James Hilton. He was four days away from having to produce a finished novel and he had written nothing, so he sat down and wrote Goodbye Mr. Chips. It was serialized in a magazine in Britain and didn’t do much, but after it was published in book form in the USA it became a runaway success and Hilton’s reputation, and future income, were assured, thanks to those four days of frantic writing.
In 1759 Samuel Johnson wrote The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia in just one week. In fact, he confined his writing to just the evenings of that week.
British writer, mountaineer, poet, occultist and (maybe) wartime spy Aleister Crowley wrote his first published novel, Diary Of A Drug Fiend, in 1922. The title described the contents admirably, and it was very likely based in part on Crowley’s own experiences of so–called black magic, sex rituals, heroin and cocaine. In spite of his prolific use of these narcotics, and a bout of fever, Crowley managed to average 5000 words a day and finished it in under a month. When it was published the book created a huge scandal and was denounced in the press and from the pulpit, thus ensuring its status as a best seller.
Gore Vidal is famous for his long, very erudite novels, frequently based on actual people and events in American history. Each of these takes him about a year, or even longer. But he did once, under the pseudonym of Edgar Box, write three murder mysteries which took him about a week each. Also, he did finish one of his more famous novels, Myra Breckenridge, in one month.
When he was writing as Richard Bachman, and before he was unmasked, Stephen King finished his novel The Running Man after a frenetic and almost sleepless weekend of writing in longhand on hotel stationery.
Another example of meeting a deadline, this time to enter a novel-writing competition. Anne Rice wrote her Interview With The Vampire in five weeks. It didn’t win the competition but it was published and was very successful, so I shouldn’t think Ms Rice was particularly bothered!
At the start of his writing career, Evelyn Waugh wrote his satirical novels, such as Scoop and Decline And Fall, in about six weeks each. As his work turned more serious, he took considerably longer over his books but when he returned to satire with Scott-King’s Modern Europe in 1947, he was able to finish it in under five weeks.
Robert Louis Stevenson woke up one morning after having had a nightmare, and proceeded to put it down on paper. He later published it and it became known ever after as The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde. It took him all of three days to write.
Attorney Erle Stanley Gardner wrote over eighty novels featuring the defense lawyer Perry Mason. They used to take him as little as four or five days each. Sometimes he would have two novels in progress at the same time. He wrote for half of each day, and devoted the other half to his law practice.
Georges Simenon was a prolific Belgian (not French!) novelist. He finished his first novel, before reaching his eighteenth birthday, in just ten days. But this was positively slouching compared to his record of finishing a book in just twenty-five hours. He is best remembered for the series of 75 detective novels featuring Inspector Maigret. He had a system for writing these: each book was eleven chapters long, and he wrote a chapter a day, so each one took just eleven days to finish. Simenon also boasted that he had slept with over ten thousand women. He was obviously a master of time management!
I am indebted for some of this information to The Book Of Lists 3
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This is very good news indeed! I think some of us suspected something of this sort might be the case, but now it is official. Owning a cat can reduce your risk of having a stroke by one third. I suppose it is the therapeutic value of stroking a loving feline that does it. They say it is relaxing and helps produce a health-giving hormone. A fitting word really – we stroke them and in return we don’t get strokes. I am very glad to be a cat owner. I don’t go all gooey over our cats, and I know they are pets not people, but I am grateful to them for this. In fact, I am feeling very smug. We have three cats. Now, if owning a cat can reduce your chances of having a stroke by a third, then it follows that if you have three cats it reduces your risk by three thirds. In other words, it neutralizes it altogether! That’s one less thing to have to worry about. Hooray for pussies!
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