Archive for January, 2009

The Universe loves me!

For the past week I’ve been consciously practising the Law of Attraction to support me having the Writing Life. (Thanks Kim Falconer for reminding me what I already knew; and for putting me onto Pray Rain Journalling)
Last night, the Universe came through.The thing is, when the Universe delivers, it isn’t always immediately apparent. Sometimes you [...]

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The best reason not to blog

Well, the 2009 daily blog resolution didn’t get very far. But that’s because the 2009 WRITING THE NOVEL resolution is going swimmingly!!
I’ve dispensed with all the excuses and the dramas of 2008, I’m back in the saddle – and loving it.
My word count has actually fallen because I’ve taken out scenes that were naff or [...]

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Vale The Prisoner

The sad loss of Patrick McGoohan at age 80 has me remembering that mad and wonderful show The Prisoner, and a weekend in Harlech, Wales, while on tour with a production of Peter Pan.
I hadn’t even realised The Village was a real place until I discovered it less than 10K from my B & B.  Spent an entire day exploring what [...]

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Are future readers being let down?

Witnessed today at a local (corporatised) child care centre (marketed as ‘early childhood learning’ centre), a fully qualified worker who could not read the word ‘chameleon’ in a book being read to the children.
Perhaps I’m just feeling tired and emotional, but how on earth can we instill a love of reading when those charged with [...]

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Beating The Man

The new solar power system was hooked up at around 4 pm Friday and within the first 72 hours we’ve generated over 18 Kw. We’ve used about 13 Kw and sold the rest to the Electrickery Company Man. At the same time we’ve bought back some of his pesky coal-fired juice (at night when we [...]

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Furious Horses

Here’s a terrifying idea – produce one short story a day for a whole year. Madness, right?  Clearly not for Christopher Currie, whose blogsite Furious Horses is based on that very premise.  Tell everyone you’re going to do it, then do it, then build up a readership which expects you to KEEP doing it, by [...]

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Going solar at last

Just got confirmation from our supplier that tomorrow our solar power system is being installed – whoo hoo!  We’re getting six panels which will generate about 1.2 Kw, and an inverter which has the capacity for 2Kw (so we can add more panels later if we want to).
So, if you buy green power, you never know [...]

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Guilty chocolate

Having partaken of way too much chocolate over Xmas, I’ve just realised how much I’ve supported the child labour trade in Africa.  I feel so dumb that I had no idea of the scale of the issue. Quarter of a million kids – many the victims of human trafficking - working in the chocolate trade, and our major [...]

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2009 resolutions

In the past 24 hours two people have inspired me.
Kate Eltham’s (Electric Alphabet) resolution to blog every day in 2009 is an ambition greatly to be admired, and yes – why not aim for the top?  I can relate to that.
I’ve just listened to Stephen Fry’s first Podgram – a wonderfully shambolic 23 minute rave from [...]

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