Life without alcohol… it’s okay. That said I have been waking up with crippling headaches for most of the last week, so either my tolerance for the magic dop has reduced to the point that a bottle of 0.05% beer is giving me a hangover, or I’m broken in a different way. Either way, it’s a super start to the day… Once I’ve recovered from that and blundered to work everything seems to be alright. I don’t feel any different, but I imagine the health benefits will be invisible and detectable only in about thirty years time when I fail to die a year early.
I have had a week of being highly vexed by people’s inability to undertake basic comprehension tasks, or example reading a question and then answering it. You know what, it’s a reading problem. A terrifying proportion of the supposed humans I have to deal with work are unable to make themselves understood or to receive information via language. Maybe they are all psychic and simply acquire their information directly from other telepaths. That would explain why my primitive arrangement of symbols so befuddles them. Yeah, that must be it.

This week’s scribbles

Tuesday Shanktimonious: Self-Righteous Angry Poetry

There ain’t nothing like a good bit of spitty rage.

Wednesday Lego Friends: My Best New Friends

For girls? Don’t be so sexist. They’ve got lovely coloured bricks.

Thursday The Desert Crystals – Part Five: The Obsidian Eyrie

Will death save young Jacob Bublesnatch, or will the horrors take him?

Friday Book Review: The First Collected Tales of Bauchelain & Korbal Broach by Steven Erikson

A delightfully surprising read.

Updates on my thrilling life

Writing

Last week was good! I’d written the Goldfur McRoo story quite a while ago, in reponse to my sister complaining that my pirate stories aren’t suitable for children. I’m fine with that, but there does seem to be a general expectation that pirates are for kids. It’s perplexing since there’s nothing about pirate life (still less the adventures of Captain Pigheart) that are mite-friendly. I have read pirate stories for young adult fiction and enjoyed them, but I have no desire to write a story from a child’s point of view. Anyway, Goldfur is my solution. Apparently the language awkwardly straddles reading skills for ages 6-14 (which is a little depressing), but I think it’s quite sweet.
I’m really getting into The Desert Crystals now. It’s a satisfying challenge to do 800-1000 words of a story in its own right and continue the series. We have diverged enormously from the direction I had in mind, which I find amusing and intriguing. Since I started with the end (or almost) in chapter one, then I somehow have to wrangle it. Hopefully the story now has a life of its own, and picking it up each week gives an opportunity for tangents and new characters. We’ll see how long it lasts for!
My beer review last week got a lot of hits, which is gratifying and some nice feedback – thank you humans! I feel I can be as honest, brutal and playful as I like when reviewing a mass-produced product. I very much hope the makers of Beck’s Blue read and are annoyed by my mockery. I’ve had one other zero-alc beer since, but once I’ve got a bunch in my belly I’ll do another review.

Last week’s scribbles

Tuesday Goldfur McRoo: Terror of The Subterranean Tunnels A pirate story for children, featuring a tiny fuzzy pirate beast.

Wednesday Pulp Pirate 18 Back on ye olde Flashe Pulpe podcast with another piratical tale.

Thursday The Desert Crystals – Part Four: The Frothing Horror The search for the missing crewman begins.

Friday Beer Review: Four Zero Alcohol Beers  Three good, one very very bad beer.

Lego

I have once again expressed my terminal indecision and dismantled the house I’m building in order to reconstruct the upper floor again. I am happier with it now! It’s not finished though. The upper floor requires walls and I need to figure out some kind of removable roof. I also need to include some kind of washing facilities.
My dear friend Tesco has been kind this week, slashing a load of Lego Chima and Lego Friends with 75% reductions. So I got 7 sets and 3 mini bags (which I already had but they have such pretty colours). More of that on Wednesday!

Improv Comedy

I missed Fisticuff’s last week so I could go to a meeting about the Furthest Point From The Sea Festival on 29th June. I’m sort of involved as an organiser, but really I’m just moral support. When that comes round we’ll be having an improv slot in the comedy tent (plus a Captain Pigheart slot) and we’ll have improv workshop space during the day.
Parky ran this week’s jam where we had a good mix of old and new improvisers which resulted in surprising and funny scenes. I felt pretty relaxed and on the ball for the couple of scenes I did. That bodes well for the show at the end of this week. I suppose one result of being so busy at work is that I’d barely noticed we’re at the end of the month already.

Media Intake

Books

I’m still staving off The Air War with random books. I found The Stone Man by Luke Smithers in the Kindle store and tore through that last week. It’s an intriguing story about a (you’ll never guess) Stone Man who appears in Coventry and then walks across the country destroying everything in its path. I enjoyed the story telling, which is almost all from one perspective, that of a reporter who turns out to be sensitive to the Stone Man’s presence. Good book! I did find the main character rather unlikeable and the repeated notes about his Asperger’s just seemed odd. It’s quite possible to be focussed on a goal and not really care about people without having to put the character somewhere on the autistic spectrum. Strange.
I’ve now moved on to The Valley of Heroes by Jonathan Stroud (author of the magnificently entertaining Bartimaeus trilogy). I’m near the beginning and waiting eagerly for the exciting stuff to kick in. I suspect I’m just being impatient, but the Norse-like medieval set up is something I’ve grown tired of in books. I wanna see the monsters.

Events and Excitement

MissImp in Action – Friday 26th April

8.30pm at The Glee Club, Nottingham.
High energy improvised comedy show.

Related articles

• This week, Monday 1st April 2013 (captainpigheart.com)
• This week, Monday 18th March 2013 (captainpigheart.com)

Related articles

• This week, Monday 18th March 2013 (captainpigheart.com)