Goodbye 2012

31 Dec

“So this is Christmas, and what have we done? Another year over, and a new one just begun.”

(from Happy Christmas (War is Over), in case you hadn’t guessed.)

I’m in a reflective mood, what with it being Hogmanay. As a Scot I can’t help but think about the year that’s passed and the year to come, even though I know that all the gradations we put on time are just human constructs, and nothing significant really happens at midnight tonight. Still, it feels significant, and I think human beings need to break time up somehow, if only to give the illusion of a destination, of starts and finishes and progress in-between.

For the last few years I’ve been very glad to let the old year go, hoping that the new one would hold better things, and for the last few years I’ve been disappointed – until this year. This year has been good. It started off well, with my knowing that I was leaving my job, which I intensely disliked, to write full-time and look after my beautiful niece. It went on well, with the successful launch of my first novel, Leda (350 copies sold to date, not counting ebooks), and later a collection of short stories, Office Life and Death. I’ve evenA New Year's Trio just published another short collection specifically about New Year, A New Year’s Trio.

My husband has also become self-employed this year, and he’s enjoying it too. Financially it’s been a difficult year (Will this recession ever end? Not if George Osborne has anything to do with it, but that’s another story.), but personally it’s been great. A post from Read to Awake, which I follow, asked “what can you do now that you couldn’t do this time last year?”  I think that’s a pretty good viewpoint to take. This year I can play the tin whistle (not well, but I can knock out  a recognisable tune) and translate passages of Virgil’s Aeneid. That’s enough in itself to make me feel that I’m not stagnating.

I’m entering 2013 with mixed feelings, however. This year my sister goes on maternity leave, removing the steady income from babysitting which has made it possible for me to give up my job and write. Come the summer, things will have to change in some way, and as yet I don’t know what shape that will take. For the first time in a long while I’ll be sorry to say goodbye to a year. Twenty twelve brought me independence, hours of fun with my baby niece, creative success and lots more. Even the Olympics turned out to be pretty good, and it was the 100th anniversary of Albania’s independence (from the Ottoman Empire, since you ask).

Still, although 2013 is the unknown, I don’t think there’s any reason to fear it – and even if there is, I choose not to. Wherever I go, I go with God and with the support of my friends and family. I hope I’ll be just as sorry to say goodbye to 2013 in twelve months time.

“The year is dying in the night. Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.”

In Memoriam, Tennyson

Tags: , , ,

Nature and Nurture

15 Dec

Pink Nail PolishHave I created a monster? (Although if I have she would be the cutest, most adorable kind of monster you could imagine.) My 21-month-old niece is the girliest girl possible, and I fear I may have a lot to do with it, since I look after her three days a week and she sees me putting on makeup, using various lotions and potions, wearing high heels etc. She insists on copying me, putting on pretend make-up and real hand cream, and picking out high-heeled shoes for me to wear even when the weather, and carrying a two-stone toddler, would make them quite impractical. She loves playing with my handbag, which keeps her amused for minutes on end. (That’s pretty good, with a one-year-old.)

But I don’t think I deserve all of the blame for this. Her mother would have to take a portion too, since my niece often comes to my place smelling of mummy’s perfume and dressed in very cute outfits, but that’s not what I mean. I don’t think this girly obsession is entirely due to her upbringing at all. I think pink blood runs in her veins, so to speak. I know it’s easy to fool yourself that you’re not imprinting gender stereotypes on your kids when in reality you are, without realising, but I have good evidence that there is something deeper. For instance, she’s obsessed with handbags, and often goes after other people’s on the train (I really must train her as a pickpocket). She’s also fascinated with painted nails. Now I rarely paint my nails and, as I’ve written before, I’m just not that into handbags. She’s not getting that from me, and I don’t think she’s getting it from my sister, either.

The thing that decided me, though, was watching her with my husband yesterday. She adores her uncle, and follows him round watching what he does – but she doesn’t copy him. She doesn’t want to put shaving foam on her face or gel in her hair. When I use deoderant she’s after me for the bottle to pretend to spray it herself, but when he does, she’s content to watch. (So am I. He has the body of a Greek god.) In other words, she knows she’s female without being told, and knows that mummy and I are too, so she models herself on us and other women. This is not conditioning, this has to be inbuilt.

Actually, she’s not as much of a girly girl as this post makes her appear. She’s also quite tough and loves being tossed into the air or chucked on the bed, and as well as handbags she likes to carry all sorts of other bags and containers, some of them very heavy. She’s also taken recently to sticking her finger up her nose, which I consider very unfeminine. Of course, children go through phases and in ten years’ time we may be laughing at the fact that she was every girly. She has a baby sister on the way now, so it will be interesting to see how that affects things, for both of them. In the meantime, I’ll just keep a wary eye on my blusher.

Tags: , , , , ,

Shadow’s Dawn by H K Miller

8 Dec

Shadows Dawn coverI must plug this book that my cousin has just released on Amazon, not just because he is my cousin but because it is good.

I can’t tell you about the plot arc properly because I haven’t read it right to the end (something I will put right very quickly) but I’ve read large sections of it to help edit it and I can tell you that the boy can write. I’ve suffered through too many badly written books to take that lightly.

It’s a fantasy novel set in a time when humans live in primitive hunter-gatherer tribes while the elves are far more civilised, but a threat is going to force them to work together. The characters are more real and earthy than in many fantasy novels – they’re irritable, they get drunk, they worry about the future not just of the world but of their tribe’s food sources. It’s got a bit of bite and realism that makes the story matter, avoiding the “so what?” reaction that can greet world-shattering crises in fantasy novels.

If you like fantasy, and you have a couple of quid to spare (I know it’s a recession, but you can stretch to £1.93), download Shadow’s Dawn, and let me know what you think.

Tags: , ,

Snowflakes, Real and Homemade

3 Dec

The first snow in Glasgow fell last night, so it seems the right time to write about something a bit Christmassy – crocheted snowflakes!

crocheted snowflakes

crocheted snowflakes

The ones you see here are my own creation, the pointy one from an online pattern and the chunkier one from a YouTube tutorial. These are made out of thread. You can make them out of wool, of course, but then they’re not so sweet and delicate.

I learnt to crochet in Albania, where all the women seem to crochet, because there’s not much else to do when the electricity goes off (as it did at that time) every evening. I’ve never been any good at knitting, so it was good to find an alternative handicraft.

I think everyone understands the thrill of creating something yourself, especially if it’s something good enough to show people or put to use. I have made a scarf that I still wear, a baby blanket, and a tablecloth, amongst my bigger projects. At times it feels like you will never finish but the good thing about crochet, unlike knitting, is that a lot of patterns are either made up of small pieces, so you have a sense of completion as you go along, or look good after the first 50 stitches or so. With knitting, at 50 stitches it would still look like a straight line.

The wee snowflakes here didn’t take anything like as long, although I did make the pointy one in a silky thread and cursed my decision several times through the hour it took to make it, as the slippery thread slipped away again. Anyway, they took less than an hour each and will now decorate my Christmas tree – whenever I can be bothered to get it down from the loft. I prefer to ease myself into Christmas, not jump right in on 1st December.

If you would like to have a go yourself you will need thread (or wool) and a hook (just the one – another advantage over knitting) which you can get for a quid or two from a department store or haberdashers. There are loads of sites that will teach you the basics, and then the world is your crocheted oyster.

Tags: , , ,

Amazing Adverts

22 Nov

As a balance to the last post about annoying adverts, here is a list of the top five adverts of all time.*

5) Google Superbowl Advert (2010)

I had to be persuaded to put this one on the list, since it’s by an evil multinational conglomerate, and it’s probably never even been shown in Britain (I stand open to correction), but when I agreed to watch this it did make my eyes go a little moist. It’s sweet, and true, if you know what I mean. It deserves a place.

If I hadn’t put the Google ad in, it would have been the John Lewis ad in which a baby girl grows up until she’s a grandmother. It’s lovely, if only because of the Billy Joel song backing it.

4) Irn Bru Snowman (2006)

This is quite a recent advert, but very funny. The visuals are just like the film “The Snowman”, and so is the angelic choirboy’s voice. The lyrics aren’t. “Now I’m falling through the air, I wonder where I’m going to land. He nicked my Irn Bru and let go of my hand.” It’s The Snowman if it had been set in Glasgow.

(A note of interest for those readers not from round here – this advert shows cartoon versions of many famous Scottish landmarks, including ones from Glasgow, and the boy actually lands in George Square in the centre of Glasgow.)

3) Boddingtons – The Cream of Manchester (1992)

Dusk. Plush surroundings. A beautiful woman in a black cocktail dress applies white cream to her face while a voiceover tells you how luxurious it is. Then we see it’s beer foam. A suave man in a suit comes in, embraces her and bursts out, “By eck! You smell gorgeous tonight, petal!” in a broad Northern accent. I think it works because there were plenty of Milk Tray and perfume adverts that looked much the same, so you really didn’t see it coming.

2) Batchelors Mushy Peas (1994)

This is how Batchelors make peas mushy: They get Craig Charles to talk to them about the good old days, back on the farm. Cruel, but funny. (A word of warning about the link – there is other stuff before the Batchelors ad. The advert itself starts 28 seconds in.)

1) Clarks Magic Steps Shoes

This is a magical blast from the past. I think this advert is from the 80’s. It absolutely hooked the target audience – wee girls, of which I was one at the time. It was probably about the same time as the film “Labyrinth” was around, and it goes for the same normal-girl-in-magical-world conceit. To really understand the appeal of this ad, though, you have to watch it and then consider this fact: the shoes actually had a key in the sole! This advert has stayed with me for many, many years, and deserves first place in my little list.

* These adverts have not been selected in a scientific way and may not actually represent the best five television advertisments of all time. Please do not complain to the Trading Standards Authority about this post. Instead, complain about those Channel 4 “Top 100” programmes where the best item is always at number 2, while number 1 is some piece of drivel.

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Adverse Advertisements

12 Nov

There are some deeply irritating adverts on (British) TV at the moment. The wee tip-off that alerted me to the fact is that I find myself shouting at the TV. Admittedly I’ve been under a bit of stress lately, but my flatmate confirms that it’s not just me, there really are some stupid adverts around at the moment. So here is our top five:

5) Chanel Number 5 (with Brad Pitt)

So much has been said about this ad that it seems unnecessary to offer further criticism. One commentator said that it sounds like it’s been Google-translated through 12 different languages and back to English. It does. Another said, “It’s not a commercial, every commercial ends but we go on. The stomach turns and we turn with it. Truth disappears, fakes take over. But wherever I go, there you are…my bad luck, my fate, my torture.” I think that about sums it up.

4) Find My Past sponsorship ads

These appear at the start and end of history / antiques themed programmes. They involve a woman with a laptop, lots of ‘actors’ playing dress-up with stereotypical period costumes and mannerisms, and occasionally a weak joke (“Use the dishwasher.” “But ma’am, I am the dishwasher!”) Lazy, boring, pointless. Grr.

3) Vaseline Essential Moisturiser

This is the one that says something along the lines of “Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a moisturiser that feels good and does good?” What a unique selling point! My current moisturiser, for instance, feels great but is made out of asbestos, while the one before that was deeply nourishing, but sadly contained pieces of shrapnel. Silly, pointless, patronising.

2) Muller Greek-Style Yoghurt

The two [spoiler alert!] centaur women discussing yoghurt on a Greek island. Leaving aside that fact that it probably does contain fat (“fat-free” doesn’t mean “does not contain fat”, strictly speaking), once again it’s the acting that makes it terrible. The fake little laugh in “It’s a myth” makes me want to chew nails, and I have to change the channel immediately.

1) Windows Tablet (with annoying dancing woman)

Pride of place is reserved for the Windows Tablet ad. There are a few of them, and some are ok, but this is the one with the awful song to which an awful black and white woman is doing an awful dance. So irritating that sparks fly from my ears, and it makes the product look clunky, busy and hard to use. An utter failure.
Next time, to lighten to mood somewhat, I think we might do a run down of some adverts that are actually good.

Tags: , , , , ,

Who Cares?

3 Nov

There are places in the world that matter, and places that don’t. There are people who matter, and people who don’t. That, at least, is the attitude of our media. I was reminded of this by Hurricane Sandy, which devastated large parts of the Caribbean, then hit New York and other parts of the USA. While the hurricane was sweeping through the (poor, black) islands, the BBC and most other news outlets just talked at great length about what was likely to happen when it hit the States, and then about what did happen, and then about the clear-up. This is because Americans (rich, culturally similar to us) matter, whereas Caribbeans do not. The 69 dead in the Caribbean managed a princely one sentence out of a thousand-word BBC web article on the effects of Hurricane Sandy.

Of course, there was some coverage. There is a blog post on the Guardian site all about this skewing of the media, and another BBC web article about the effect on Haiti, where 54 people were killed out a population of 10 million (compared to 90 out of the USA population of 300 million).

This isn’t an isolated incident. In one of those strange co-incidences that life seems made up of, there were a number of bus crashes over the space of a few months, most of them involving students or young people. The one in Surrey in September, returning from Bestival, you’ve probably heard of. Three people were killed, others received horrific injuries. The ones in Iran (26 dead) and India (11 dead, not students) in October, you may or may not have done, but I can pretty much guarantee that you heard not a peep about the terrible crash in Albania in May. Thirteen students were killed and another twenty badly injured when a bus plunged over a cliff. One girl was left in a coma and had to be told, upon recovery, that her fiancé had died in the crash.

I know about it because I get an Albanian newsfeed through Facebook, and have a lot of Albanian friends and family, too. Over the years I have been annoyed, although I’m no longer surprised, whenever there have been wildfires or floods or droughts or violence around the elections in Albania, and there has been not even a one-sentence mention of it on the TV news. Albania is a place that does not matter, as far as our media (and, I suppose, most people) are concerned. The country would have to sink into the sea like Atlantis or (more realistically) help or threaten one of our allies or enemies before it would warrant a mention. (Although I should say that, once again, there is a BBC web article. Some Albanian news is there if you go looking for it, but if you’re looking for it then you probably know about it already.)

Now I understand why the Bestival crash received more attention. It’s natural to be interested in things that happen in your own country to your own people, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s also understandable that we get more news about our allies or, in the case of Iran, or enemies, since these things have a more direct effect on us. Human nature means that we’re probably more interested in the two Brits who died in an (hypothetical) air crash than the 70 non-Brits.

The amount that news is skewed towards us and our allies is out of proportion, though. OK, Albania is a special interest of mine, but how can it possibly be right that the 6 o’ clock news can fail to mention the trail of death and devastation Sandy left in Haiti, Cuba, Jamaica, the Bahamas etc., but can give 5-10 minutes (of a half-hour programme) to speculation about how the hurricane will affect the election of the leader of a foreign country? Of course, the main TV news is not the only information out there. I should probably listen more to the world news programmes, and it’s a failing on my part if I’m not interested enough to do so. But I just wanted to express my conviction that the dichotomy in the mainstream media between the “matters” and the “don’t matters” is unfair, morally pernicious, and makes things worse for the suffering areas of the world that we should care about more.

Tags: , , , ,

Foreign Encounters Released

25 Oct

Foreign EncountersThe Writers Abroad anthology Foreign Encounters has been released. I have a short piece in it called “Sounion”, which is rather good and atmospheric if I say so myself.

Foreign Encounters is available from Lulu as a paperback for £7.44 ($9.99, hence the strange UK price), and profits go the the charity Books Abroad which provides school books to poor countries.

The anthology will probably come out as an ebook at some point, too, if you prefer your books that way.

Tags: , , ,

The Consolations of Growing Up

23 Oct

Last week I unwisely finished reading The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman shortly after watching the end of Peter Pan (2003) on TV. Both of them have bittersweet endings involving the hero or heroine growing up and leaving behind friends or family who are unable to join them – either because they are ghosts (in the case of The Graveyard Book) or because they are Peter Pan, and have vowed never to grow up. Both of them left me in tears – although, to be fair to myself, I had been working rather hard, feeling stressed and staying up too late, which can make anything seem worth crying about.

Absorbed in quick succession these works can leave you feeling that “to grow up is such a barbarous business”, that growing older is not just a tragedy but also some kind of failure, as if every year you allow to slip by is a betrayal of the happiness of your youth. For me personally it doesn’t help that I’m approaching a milestone. Not that this is your average milestone, mind you. I’m not turning thirty or having a child or anything, but I will soon be older than Alexander the Great ever was. That probably means nothing to you but I’ve idolised him since I was 17, and now that I’m about to outlive him (barring accident), it’s impossible not to notice that he achieved more with his life by this point than I have.

Fortunately, I have an excellent antidote to all this morose calendar-watching. I am currently studying the life of St Augustine, another towering figure from antiquity who, like Alexander, suffers a lot of misunderstanding and bad press. Unlike Alexander, though, Augustine spent quite a lot of his youth faffing around, getting into trouble and wondering what it all means. It wasn’t until he was about the age that Alexander died (incidentally also about the same age that Jesus died – a strangely significant age, apparently) that he surrendered to God, pulled himself together, and made something of his hitherto pointless life. He went on to write some of the greatest works of Christian literature and to use his remarkable rhetorical powers trying to bring unity to the church and godliness to people’s lives. He lived to be 75.

Most of us don’t achieve that much with our early lives. Although there are always exceptions, like Alexander the Great, Pitt the Younger and Premiership footballers, most of us are just getting started by the time we’re thirty – which is fine, because there’s a lot of life still to come. In fact, much as we may look back with fondness on the “blue remembered hills” of our childhoods, we tend to get better at almost everything with age. Adults are more skillful than kids. I find I can knit better than I could as a child, translating Latin has mysteriously become easier (although it’s still extremely hard), and don’t even get me started on child actors or (shudder) children singing.

In fact, it’s not even clear if the sadness in Peter Pan is that Wendy must grow up, or that Peter never will. Their separation is caused by the combination of those two factors, not by one or the other. So I will be sad to overtake Alexander and leave him behind me, eternally youthful, but perhaps more for his sake than mine. After all, getting older might sometimes be pants, but it’s better than the alternative.

Tags: , , , , ,

Trendy Tots

4 Oct

Yesterday I saw a beautiful dress. It was a lilac-grey jumper dress with bands of lace. It’s very on-trend and would probably suit me. Normally if I really liked an item I would ask the wearer where she got it, but in this case the wearer was my one-year-old niece. Even if she was able to tell me what shop it was from, they probably wouldn’t do it in my size.

I am not the only one who has noticed the astonishing change in baby clothes since I was a baby myself. I don’t actually remember what I wore as a baby, of course, but going by things I remember wearing as a small child – hand-knitted jumpers and cardigans, dungarees, endless hand-me-downs – I don’t think that I was being wheeled around in my pram in brand-name jeans.

These days kids have a much bigger range of clothes to choose from, although they are not usually the ones doing the choosing. It’s not just my niece. The new pastor’s son (aged one) looks the epitome of cool in his jeans and hoodies, while my nephew (also aged one) could easily swap clothes with my husband (not aged one) without anyone noticing anything amiss, apart from the difference in size. (Truth be told, there’s not that much difference in size, actually; my nephew is huge for his age.) I’ve even seen a tiny girl on the train with a top-end brand-name scarf (I think it was Prada), which just seems silly. Surely Asda tastes just as good as Prada?

It’s easy to disapprove of the money wasted on these clothes, particularly the expensive brands, when the kids will only grow out of them, but while there’s logic in this, I think there’s also a bit of jealousy. “We had to wear scratchy, hand-me-down woolens, how come they get Next dresses with cute stripy tights? Let them suffer too!” Not a very attractive, or very fair attitude. Some of the new baby clothes aren’t any more expensive than the ones we wore, anyway, it’s just that manufacturers make them in line with adult fashions now, which for some reason they never used to. And a major point in their favour is how cute the kids look in them. Grown women squeal and sigh over my niece’s wardrobe, and how adorable it makes her look. (Not that she wouldn’t look adorable anyway. She is related to me, after all.;))

On balance I think I like the trend for trendy tots. Their baby photos will be less embarrassing to them in the future, and in the meantime it’s fun to dress them nicely. There’s just one thing that would make my approval complete: an enlarging machine, like on Honey I Blew Up the Baby, so I can have the lacy dress when my niece has finished with it.

Tags: , , , ,

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →