Here We Go Again

Hi all,
May I wish you all a very happy and healthy new year. I will be glad to be going into a new year because 2013 was anus horrible. We should be in our new house by now but because of some nameless and hopeless solicitors we are were are stuck where we are.

In the past it used to take about eight weeks to buy and sell a house but we've almost doubled that and we are still counting. Hopefully, it will be resolved soon.

The good news is that we have turned the corner and we can all look forward to the new year. The nights are drawing out and spring is just around the corner. Before we know it, we will be knee deep in daffodils again.

One good thing has come out of this period of limbo that I find myself in. I have decided to take the opportunity that comes with having no distractions, no proper access to the Internet etc, to get on with my latest book. By the way, I am doing this blog from hotspot that would be better described as luke warm.

I mentioned the book before and it is called The Reluctant Pom. It follows my enforced emigration to Australia when I was an impressionable sixteen years old. The good thing about writing is that it blocks everything else out of my mind, which, when you have all the stress that comes with moving, is a good thing.

So far, I have managed 11,000 words and I have a minimum target of 1,000 words per day. I think the book will run to about 50,000 words, so even with the odd day when I'm forced into doing non writing tasks, I hope to have it finished sometime in February and published for my birthday in April.

If you ever decide to write a book, please set yourself a target for completion. If you don't, it will just drift, and you will not only lose the momentum but you will find it hard to keep picking up the thread. Every book  has a tone to it, so if you are doing a bit one week and a bit more the next you will loose the whole feel of the book and that will be noticed by you reader.

Books are like songs, the best ones are written quickly. Once you've got the story down you can take you time with the editing and polish it till your heart is content.

Still Waiting

Hi all,
I am very frustrated at the moment. We bought a new bungalow (well second-hand actually) almost three months ago, but we are still waiting for a moving date. There are only four of us in the chain and we are moving to an empty house, so how hard can it be? What do estate agents do once they've done the valuation and printed a brochure? On top of that, those involved in the conveyancing seem to be more elusive than the Scarlet Pimpernel.

Ah well, I will just have to be patient and chill out. One good thing has come out of the long wait in so much as I have sold a few bits and pieces I no longer need. Everything I have put on eBay, sold quite nicely with the exception of last week's listing.

We have a large wooden plaque upon which has been carved a shire horse. It was purchased by my mother-in-law from a wood carver in Yorkshire sometime in the late sixties or early seventies.

Anyway, I thought there would be a stampede by those involved with horses to get there reins on this beautiful bit of unique craftsmanship. I thought it would look great in the hall way of some half-timbered manor house, or hanging on the wall in the reception area of a stables or a stud farm.

Alas I was wrong, because despite it having a lucky horseshoe on each leg, nobody gave it a second glance during its first listing. So in an effort to find a nice place for it, I have ploughed on and dropped the starting price substantially. Somebody is going to get a bargain, so if you know anybody who is a bit on the horsey side please let them have this link.

New Book

Hi all, I've had a very busy summer this year, not least because our large garden has been in need of constant attention. However, that particular issue has been sorted on two fronts. Firstly, the cold weather is here and, although it hasn't stopped the weeds growing altogether, it has at least slowed them down to a gallop. Secondly, and more importantly, we are moving to a bungalow with a much smaller garden. This means that I will be able to spend time doing what I want to do and not be chained to the lawn mower.

When I was younger and fitter I used to enjoy gardening, but now I am older and less able I've got an incurable touch or irritable trowel syndrome.

So what am I going to do with all this extra time? Well it isn't going to happen straight away because the place we are moving to has been a bit neglected. It will probably take a year to get it the way my nearest and dearest would like it, but I will work at it in a sensible fashion and hopefully still have some 'me time'. 'Me time' is getting more important as I get older because there are so many things I want to do and one never know how much 'me time' one has left.

I am trying to make more time for my craft work. Pyrography, scroll sawing and exploring the versatility of polymer clay are all high on my priority list. However, I also want to get back to my writing and want to create at least three more books before I put my pen away for good.

While I've been busy during the summer I've been wondering about which book I would do next. Would it be another Fishing Detectives novel featuring Fred Tench or would I do something different? The answer is, something different.

I have been surprised at the popularity of 'A Staffordshire Boy Tales of Fishing and Other Fun' and have been considering the sequel.

'A Staffordshire Boy,' concludes with my father declaring that we would be emigrating to Australia, so this is where the new book will start. I have made a start by mapping out the chapter headings and I'm looking forward to putting some meat on the bones.

The only fly in the ointment is the title. I had been mulling it over for a while and seeing as we were taking advantage of the assisted package, I was going to call it, 'The Ten Pound Pom'. However, a quick search on Amazon revealed that somebody had already used that title so it's a no goer.

A rethink was necessary and I came up with 'The Reluctant Pommie' which highlights the fact that I didn't want to go down under in the first place. Well why would I? I'd just got my first motor bike and I had discovered girls. A life full of flies and poisonous spiders I'm sure would offer no compensation. Still, I survived and at least the experience has given me something to write about.

With a bit of luck I should be publishing it for my birthday in April and then I'll get back to Fred Tench. and the Fishing Detective series.

Bossyboots free again

Hi all,
Just a quick post to let you know that I have made 'Bossyboots' free again for a short period.
If you would like a copy of 'Bossyboots' please follow this link to my website and you will find the details.

A customer's review
'Not the kind of book that I would normally read, but I had read all the authors other books and really enjoyed them so I had to give this a try, and I am very glad that I did. A very good story, well thought out with good characters.
I would recommend this book to anyone as I would all of this authors books'

When is a toasty not a toasty

Hi all,
There was a time when eating out was a pleasure. Cafes and pubs provided delicious meals and took pride in what they were serving. I'm sorry to say that by and large this has changed and finding an establishment that serves decent food is a real challenge. Some of the stuff I've been presented with should have gone straight into the wheelie.

I'm not even fussy, good hot food that is tasty and presented cleanly is all that I require. The only other thing I would add is that I don't like waiting too long. Sitting in a dreary pub for an hour waiting for lasagna and chips is the stuff of nightmares.

Anyway, my wife and I decided we need a break from preparing to move house and decided to try a restaurant that was part of a garden centre. It had recently been refurbished an the owner were bragging about how good the food is.

The weather was grim when we arrived, so were disappointed to find that the menu consisted mostly of sandwiches. I can make a sandwich at home and given that it was drizzling for Britain outside we really wanted something hot, so we both elected to have a toasty.

I ordered cheese and onion while my wife went for ham and pineapple. She also fancied a bit of cheese in her toasty and when she gave here order she asked if some cheese could be added. Now we ain't daft and expected them to add a little surcharge for this extra, but 75pence seemed extravagant for a bit of cheese that would fill a mouse trap. This meant that the cost of her toasty soared to over £5, but what the hell, I was paying and it was supposed to be a treat.

Thirty minutes passed before the food arrived, but hey ho, good food is worth waiting for. My wife's face dropped to the floor when the food arrived. Instead of a toasty we were presented with 2 slices of toasted bread which held the raw filling. To make matters worse the edges of my wife's bread were burnt. But it doesn't end there, the cheese that was worth it's weight in diamonds wasn't present.

Alongside this imposter of a toasty was a side salad that consisted of a piece of lank lettuce, 2 slices of stale cucumber, a quarter of a tomato and wait for it, half a tangerine. Yes, that's right, half a tangerine. There would have been a lot of head shaking if a masterchef contestant had served that concoction up to Greg Wallace and John Torode.

Eventually, my wife, who was by now getting a touch vexed, managed to catch the attention of the lady who'd taken our order.
"Where's the cheese I paid an extra 75 pence for," my wife asked as she peeled back the top of the imitation toasty."
"I'm sorry," says the woman, "I can take it back and have some put on," the woman replied.
"Don't bother, I'll just have my 75 pence back," said my wife to the woman who was looking a trifle disgruntled.

I wondered how she expected the toasty to get on if she had given it another blast under the grill because it already resembled one of Joan of Arc's hankies. I passed my comments onto the woman but she walked away without raising a smile.

I was hungry so I ate as much as I could and my wife had a bit of a poke around in hers before she went off to get her 75pence and complain about the toasty which was actually a sandwich made from toasted bread.

I met her outside by the car and was surprised to find her laughing. Apparently, the restaurant can't do proper toasties because they don't have a toasty maker. The woman also went on to say that they used to do proper toasties because another lady used to bring her toasty machine in with her everyday from home. However, she doesn't work there any more, so that's why they can't do proper toasties.

I can't understand the logic of the owner spending thousands of pound refurbishing a restaurant and then failing to provide the staff with a fifty pound toaster so that they can make the items that are on the menu. No wonder my wife was laughing.

New Car Madness

Hi All,
Finding a new car should be an good experience and by and large that is what we had recently after deciding to part with our Yaris. However, we were left aghast after visiting one showroom.

Firstly, let me tell you why we were changing cars. This was our second Yaris and we found it, like the first, an economical and comfortable drive. The first Yaris was an automatic and we enjoyed having her for three years. The only complaint we had was that the automatic gear box wasn't well suited to motorway driving. So we changed to a new one with a manual 6 speed gear box.

To begin with it was fine and seemed to suit us down to the ground, but eventually the 6 speed gearbox began to grate. Not literally of coursed, the engineering was fine, it was just tedious having to change gear so many times on even a short journey. The gears were so close together that unless I concentrated hard I didn't know what gear I was in. Let's face it, driving isn't easy any more; half the drivers I see are on the phone while most of the others are picking their noses in search of that elusive bogey.

Anyway, we decided we needed an automatic, but the cheapest automatic Yaris was out of our budget so we had to find a new model. All we wanted was a small comfortable car with an automatic gearbox, how hard could it be?

This is what happened at one dealership.

We parked our car in the customers' car park and walked along the front of the showroom looking at the new cars. However, this showroom, unlike all the others we had already visited, didn't have any small cars in the showroom, they were parked outside.

We began looking at one of these models and tried to open the doors so that we could sit inside and get the feel for it. That was our first mistake because all the doors were locked.

At this point we were approached by a couple of salesmen. One was a young lad who looked as if he had only just got into long pants and the other had daft spiky hair which made him look like he'd come to work on speedboat. The youngest of the two introduced himself as the sales manager and we had a short conversation about wanting to look inside the car and asked if they did it in automatic.
He said an automatic version was available and they both went off to retrieve the keys so that we might be able to sit in the car that we were looking at.

Well my wife and I stood there like a couple of stooges for at least five minutes waiting for at least one of them to return when we were approached by a man in a suit who looked like a bouncer from the local nightclub. If you think Joe Bugner you will know what I mean.

"I'm the manager, can I help?" he asked abruptly.
"We are waiting for your sales manager to come back with the keys so that we can look inside this car," my wife said.
"Leave it with me," he said as he strutted off looking like he was going to give somebody a left hook.

Another five minutes past while we circled the car more times than Sitting Bull and his trusty braves went around a beleaguered waggon train bound for Wounded Knee. To be honest, we were going off it and seeing as the salesmen didn't want a sale we headed back to our car.

Just as we were getting into our car, the salesman with the spiky hair was coming out of the back of the showroom at the other end of the building.

"Were are you going?" he shouted.
"Sorry we've waited around long enough," I replied.
"But I've got the keys to an automatic parked in the compound," he shouted as he held the keys aloft, just in case I didn't know what keys look like.
"Sorry, but you've had your chance," I said as I got into the car.
"Well piss off then," he said.
My wife, who at this time was still standing said, "I heard that."
"No you didn't," he replied.

In years gone by I would have got back out of the car and had it out with him. Reported him to the manager and all that stuff, but I keep trying to rise above that sort of stuff. So we laughed it off and hoped that when he got back inside his deserted showroom that the Joe Bugner look alike, would land him one squarely on the chin.

I won't mention which dealership it was or the make of car involved because during the whole time we were there we didn't see another customer and I guess there is no need to wonder why?

More Madness

We have been having our groceries delivered for several years now. By and large it works well because it saves us walking around the store dodging the numerous zombies that seem to frequent every aisle.

There have been a few problems, like the time when I ordered some Australian Merlot wine. They were out of stock on the Merlot so the person picking my order substituted Australian Shiraz.The thing is, I wanted Merlot not Shiraz, but they thought the most important thing was the fact that it was Australian. On reflection, I'm just glad I didn't receive a boomerang.

Anyway, I think the whole on line shopping for groceries is in decline. I base this observation on the fact that our shopping was very often late or it appeared at the very end of our allocated slot. But things have changed, Our shopping is getting earlier and earlier and always before our allocated time.

I don't want it early. I want it during the slot that I have booked. This allows them to organise their deliveries and me to organise the rest of my day. Coming early isn't a bonus it's a pain in the Jacksy.

We usually have the shopping delivered between 9am and 11am, so imagine my surprise this week when I took some stuff out to the wheelie bin and parked up at the end of the street was the delivery van. The driver, who we knew well, was reading a newspaper that was propped on the steering wheel.

I checked my watch and noted that the time was 8:20am, so that is at least 40 minutes earlier and too early for even him to turn up on our doorstep. I had a slice of toast and he knocked on the door at ten minutes to nine.

On a happier note, we have just taken delivery of a new car and we are pleased with it. However, we did have a strange experience when choosing the model and I will tell you about that in my next post.

By the way, I have decided to extend the free offer regarding my book Bossyboots.

If you would like to download a free copy please click here and type in coupon code TK32S at the check out. If you would like to know what this funny book is about,Click here to watch the trailer