(Today is CFS/M.E. Awareness Day, read David Tubb's blog post on The Hidden Tower about his own trouble with that particular illness. I only hope I'll have something of such high quality to post on here one day!)
Every day I like to walk ten thousand steps (which is about five miles) and I absolutely love it. I do all this in an evening walk and sometimes an afternoon walk too. Recently, however, I have started having a morning walk. This might be the nicest one of all. The truth is, I don't actually go for a walk in the morning (unless I'm doing something, I normally get up at 12 p.m.) but several times lately, just before I've woken up, I've dreamt that I'm out on one of my walks. Things are different than normal though, everything is silent and perfectly serene and I'm wrapped up in my duvet in my pyjamas and feel as comfortable as somebody lying in a warm bed on a cold morning. Then I just shuffle along and peacefully enjoy my walk until my alarm wakes me up. One time I dreamt I was in a large unknown city, another time I walked all the way to Bath (and it looked very different when I got there), but normally it's lovely old Corsham. It's not a lucid dream, I'm not fully aware, but in it I know I'm out having a walk 'before I wake up', and I just think it's very nice that I've been having this recurring dream lately. I hope it continues.
(Today is CFS/M.E. Awareness Day, read David Tubb's blog post on The Hidden Tower about his own trouble with that particular illness. I only hope I'll have something of such high quality to post on here one day!)
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Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is one of the easiest and most 'fun' reads of the nineteenth century. While other pieces of that time tend to be written in styles that are overly wordy, everything here is very simply put and easily accessible. Though before I continue I do think it's important to point out that I'm certainly not criticising the writing fashions of that era (many of my favourite novels were written then) I just wanted to point it out to anybody who might not read it on the assumption that it would be written like that. The story follows the journey of a girl named Alice across a strange world known as Wonderland. At first, Alice is happily living in what you or I would call the 'real' world but then she follows a talking rabbit down a rabbit hole and finds herself in Wonderland. While she's there she ends up in all kinds of weird and wonderful scenarios from playing croquet with a flamingo, to swimming through a sea of her own tears to meeting the Mock Turtle (of mock turtle soup fame). But outside of crazy situations, part of the fun of this novel comes from its cast of peculiar characters. First you have Alice herself, she's a sweet and nice girl and acts as a kind of gateway character for us, but she's just the icing on the cake. Perhaps the most famous of all (aside from Alice) is the Hatter (and his friend the March Hare) who invite Alice to join them for a 'mad' tea party and this scene is one of the most entertaining ones, so I can see why he's well remembered. There's also the mysterious Cheshire Cat, my personal favourite, who appears (out of thin air) to have strange conversations with Alice at various parts of the story. Something especially good about this novel is that while fairly serious things happen (there are times when Alice could actually die!) it never really makes a big deal out of anything. Even when Alice is in serious danger, it still reads like a light bit of fun, and I think this gives the whole thing a particular charm as making it all very dark would be a little cliché. I'm also pleased by how easily Alice accepts this strange world, she does think it's weird, but that's pretty much it. I find that very endearing. It's a lovely adventure. Rating: 9/10 (I do not own the copyright of the cover image.)
Recently I've been watching a very good television programme called The Walking Dead, but there're a few things which bother me about the show, the main one being that the heroes often kill people needlessly and I don't like it very much. If I were in that world, I often think to myself, I'd be much less violent about it.
Well, it just so happens that I had a dream where I was the living in a zombie apocalypse and so I had a chance to apply my morality to this new setting. I remember, for whatever reason, I was staying inside a giant warehouse and I had a nice little bed set up on the ground near the entrance. One morning, I was just waking up when I saw a gang of three tough looking armed men walking into the warehouse. "Good morning," I said, getting up quickly and walking towards them. They all pointed their guns at me, but I said "Don't worry, I don't have any weapons in here, so you won't need to use your ones either." "Give us your food!" the man demanded. "You don't have to steal it from me, I'm quite happy to give you a nice portion, just so long as there's enough for me, and I don't eat much," I said. "Well, alright then," he said. I popped into the back room and filled up a few sacks with food, one for each of the three men. "I hope that will be enough," I said. "Thank you," their leader said kindly. "Feel free to come back in future," I said as they left. "Look out for zombies!" And as they happily walked off into the distance, I woke up and found myself in my regular bed. Of course, I then instantly recorded it in my dream journal and so it was remembered long enough to become this blog entry! (Don't miss today's Finger Puppet Show!) I'm sure most readers will be familiar with my Finger Puppet Show webcomic which I started posting on this site (but since moved to ComicFury) in 2012 and this chart shows the way that it fits in with my expanded universe of writing. Perhaps inspired by Nintendo and Rareware (whose games I played at a young age) I am very keen for all of my writing to be connected. Every line on the chart means an interaction between characters, or at least some acknowledgement that they are in the same world. I made this for a piece of coursework, but in the end didn't include it, but I liked it and thought I would post it here. I almost added an extra box for 'Trusty Water Blog' which would have been connected to 'Gordon Orson Dobson' because of that blog post he wrote on here but I decided not to since this site is primarily non-fiction. Ironically, the one story I've had professionally published does not fit into this, but I'll find a way to add it eventually!
Most nights in Corsham there is a group of teenagers who sit around in the empty town and listen to very loud and explicit songs like this. They're often riding around on their bikes and chatting to one another with a lexicon full of obscenities. I often see them when I'm with one or both of my brothers and after we've passed them they'll always say that they're idiots and so on, but I always tell them that they shouldn't judge them because, for all we know, they're actually really nice people. After all, the only thing they know about this group is their choice of pass time.
Well, it just so happens that they were sitting around outside Co-Operative Food the other day and I had a small interaction which proved one of us right. There had been a lot of rain that day and so I was wearing my extra big rain jacket with lots of buttons. "Your buttons are done up wrong," said a girl in the group. "Oh yes?" I said, thinking I'd been wearing the jacket wrong all these years. "How should it be?" "Well, you see," she stepped forward to where she could clearly point at the buttons, "you accidentally put that button through that hole." It seems it was just a one off mistake and not a long standing problem after all. "Oh, yes, I see! Thank you very much, I shall fix that up right away," I said, thankful that somebody had been kind of enough to point out my error for me so that I could fix it. "That's alright," she said, kindly. "Bye bye!" "Goodbye." And so we parted ways. Of course, while I did enjoy our very short conversation due to the fact that somebody was helping me with a fashion related problem out of the kindness of their heart, I was especially pleased with the fact that she was a member of the group that my brothers perceived as nothing but no-good trouble makers. Now that we know that one of them was nice all along, perhaps they'll accept that they aren’t all the stereotypes they think they are? (Don't miss today's Finger Puppet Show!) |
About the AuthorAdam Randall is the author of the blog. Is he a good or bad writer? Who knows? Why not read a few entries and make a decision! New to this Site?
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