One of my earliest blog entries, made during the summer of 2011, was of a few photos of The Wilderness. As you can see for yourself, it all looks very summery in those pictures. A little later, during Feburary of this year, it snowed and so I took some more photos of the same place to show the contrast, and then posted it on here too. Now, with Autumn just over, I have a fresh batch of photos and can make another entry documenting another season in The Wilderness! Enjoy :)
2 Comments
Just yesterday I went into London in order to attend The Writing Platform event (which is part of the bigger Literary Platform) where several interesting things about the modern world of writing and publishing were discussed. While I may have had to spend eight hours of the day travelling in order to hear this, luckily for you, I'll write down all of the main information here and you won't even have to leave your seat!
At the start of the event, Kate Pullinger gave a nice introduction which was very enjoyable... Well, I imagine it was nice and very enjoyable (she teaches my New Media class), but I was unfortunate enough to miss this (as was the rest of the class) because we arrived around half an hour late due to traffic! When I finally arrived, Gemma Seltzer was in the middle of a talk about Arts Council England. She said that applying for funding from the Arts Council is the next step to take once your writing is beginning to gain a little bit of interest. However, they only give out funding to around 30-40% of people, so anybody who would be interested in that should be sure that their writing, most importantly, is of a high quality and will engage with the public somehow. Next up was a conversation between James Bennett and Joanna Ellis about copyright laws and how they are adapting to the increase in digital distribution of content online. James outlined how copyrighting worked in the UK (you automatically have the rights to everything you make, it last up until seventy years after death) and talked about ways in which things are changing in the modern world. He mentioned systems in both France and Korea which greatly decreased online piracy, but he didn't really go into much detail on what they were (unfortunately). What I found most interesting, however, was a little prediction he made, which was that in thirty or forty years, illegally downloading things will be considered very unacceptable by the average person! I certainly look forward to fining out whether that will ever be a reality. The fourth thing on the schedule was a talk between Kerry Young, Susan Yearwood and Jacob Sam-La Rose on the subject of the identity of a writer. This was one of my favourite events of the day, because Kerry and Jacob seemed to have quite different views on the subject: Jacob was all in favour of an author promoting and building up their identity through online means such as Twitter, whereas Kerry was quite against it all (at least in her own case), saying that it distracted too much from the main part of writing. Kerry said that her main advice to upcoming writers was "don't just put anything out into the universe" which is something I disagree with. She said that a lot of people are posting very poor writing online and even Jacob agreed that the amount of content on the internet was like a huge floor, and so people should only post their very best. She stressed that work should be workshopped before it is posted in order to reduce the amount of 'bad' writing out there, but what I think she's failed to realise is that not everybody has access to lots of people who can give them feedback and so posting it on the internet is their best chance at getting what they need to improve their work. I'd also like to add, that I personally think that appreciation of any art is entirely biased, and so what might be 'just anything' to one person, could be the absolute pinnacle of writing to another. Next, Lisa Gee, Gavin Wilson and Rohan Quine each promoted a different online platform for writing. Lisa spoke about Unbound a website which helps upcoming writers to receive funding from others (though requires them to promote themselves a lot), Gavin spoke about Wattpad where you can post pieces of writing and receive feedback from other users and Rohan talked about the upsides of having your worked first published in eBook form. I personally found that Wattpad seemed to be the most interesting of these three options and I may well be opening an account sometime soon. Courttia Newland and Nii Parkes (Leone Ross was due to attend, but was unavailable at the last moment) talked about issues of race and class in the publishing world. While this penultimate talk may not have been all that handy for upcoming writers seeking advice, it was still certainly very interesting. I was completely unaware of the odd representations of minority characters in most books, or that most publishers are white middle class people, so this was quite an enlightening hour for me. Finally, Tom Chivers and Gemma Seltzer (again) talked about the ways in which a writer can be successful through writing forms 'beyond the page'. Gemma talked at length about her Speak to Strangers project which was her speaking to a hundred different strangers and then writing about each one. I found this particularly inspiring, and may just do the exact same thing sometime in the future, it may not be original, but I feel like I might get a lot from it. Throughout they encouraged writers to be bold and experimental with their blogs and to try new and exciting things... (not like, say, just writing up events. Darn!). And so that was the whole of The Writing Platform event. While it may have been very long and far away, I can't say that I haven't learned from it, nor can I say that it didn't give me ideas about what to do with this blog. I hope you've found this to be an interesting report of the event. The guest star in today's strip is none other than David Tubb.
All finger puppets can be bought here. As I'm sure I've mentioned many times before, I like riding on the bus. This is awfully lucky for me, since I tend to have to take four bus rides a day on way to and from Bath Spa University. This equals out to roughly 120 bus rides a year for me, so you can imagine I've had many crazy adventures relating to buses.
The last three buses home to Corsham from Bath, are at 7:14 p.m., 8:30 p.m. and 11 p.m. As I'm sure you can imagine, I tend not to like missing my bus at this time, because then I'm left with quite a significant wait before I can get home. Not that I'm complaining about missing the bus, of course, I'm quite content to sit and play Tetris or wander the streets at night while I wait for the next! One day, at 7:14 p.m., I just arrived at the station to see the doors closing on my bus. I ran up to the doors and tapped on them. The driver let me in, but he said "You're lucky; I'm not supposed to let people on board after the doors are closed, don't do it again" and, of course, I won't do it again. So I sat down in my usual seat on the bus, and thought happily about how I'd soon be home and that I wouldn't be late. I had very nearly missed it. The bus started driving along and headed towards its first stop. However, when the bus arrived at the first stop, the driver turned the engine off and did not open the door for more people to get in. "I'm sorry," he said as he turned around to look at all of the passengers, "but we're going to have to stop here. The bus is no longer safe to drive because the speedometer is broken." As such, we had to sit and wait for ten minutes or so, for the next bus to come along. Eventually, a, much smaller, bus arrived and everybody was moved from the main bus to the next. Ten minutes was no big delay, I'd still be happily home on time. The moving of everybody from one bus to the next, and then the letting on of people waiting at the stop, probably took around another ten minutes. The second bus drove Corsham-wards and everything seemed to be going swimmingly. However, once we were around 3/4 of the way home, the bus stopped again. The driver then told us that the bus was close to overheating and that it would be unsafe to drive. For another ten minutes or so, we waited for the bus to cool down. We were on a country road and, with everything of the bus turned off, we were just sat in darkness as we waited for this cooling to take place. Eventually, the driver decided to try the engine again, and it seemed that it was still dangerously close to overheating. With this latest revelation, the driver decided to call the bus HQ in order to find a solution. Luckily, First Buses had an excellent answer to this problem! The driver was told that he should just carry on driving, and so he did. For the last ten to twenty minutes or so, there was quite a strong smell of burning... And then eventually I was home, only ten minutes earlier than I would have been had I just caught the next bus. Do you happen to have been punched in the face before? If not, it's quite painful. Here's a little story about how I found myself at the other end of an angry fist.
One day after school (this was early/mid 2007 by the way), I had been invited to go out with some friends. One of them, however, seemed to think it would be quite funny to keep hitting me, specifically by kicking me between the legs (I shan't name them, of course, I don't want to embarrass them, they were only fourteen!). Anyway, after a couple of hours, I decided that I'd probably be happier at home. While it is nice to hang out with a group of friends, having almost constant pain while doing so is rather a steep price to pay. As such, I decided to leave. I was happily strolling back, when the person who had been hurting me ran along and caught up with me. "Why are you going home already?" she asked. "Well," I said, and wondered how to explain, "I suppose it's because I don't like some of the people there." I looked at her and raised my eyebrows. And that's when I was punched in the face. She was either a lot stronger than she looked, or I was a lot weaker than I looked, probably the latter, because it was so powerful I remember being knocked to the ground. "Ow," I said rubbing my cheek, "that was quite painful." "You looked right at me when you said you didn't like some of the people there," she said. "If you don't like me, we've got no reason to be talking." And off she went. On reflection, I suppose it would have made more sense to say "I don't like the fact that you are constantly kicking me in the crotch" but I was still kind of hurting from the last kick, and I guess my reply was given rather exasperatedly. But, yes, that's the story of how I was punched in the face and, also, for quite a while after, how the puncher, and several of her friends, were very angry with me. It's been quite a while since I've written any regular old anecdotes on here, which used to actually make up the majority of posts. As such, the next three entries will all be new anecdotes.
Anyway, this summer I travelled to London to meet my internet friend Mairi Mac Arthur for the second time. It was all very fun and I was even able to buy myself a new pocket watch! But, while there, about half way through the day, we decided to stop for a toilet break, and this is when this anecdote takes place. When I popped into the men's room, I realised that it seemed to be entirely empty, so I decided to myself that I may as well use one of the urinals in order to save time. However, as soon as I approached the urinal, a female cleaner mysteriously appeared and started cleaning the urinal directly beside it. Now, for city folk, a female cleaner in the men's room during the middle of the day is perfectly natural, but for backwards country people like me, this seems very strange. Although, to be honest, I'd be quite equally uncomfortable if the cleaner were male. So, instead of using the urinal beside the cleaner, I made it look like I'd just decided to take an unusual route towards one of the cubicles. I prefer cubicles anyway, much more private and you can sit down, which is nice. While I was in there, I heard somebody else come into the room, he then went into the cubical beside me. Then I heard a knock on his door. "Hey!" it was the cleaner. The man didn't reply. "Hey, you in there?" she asked. Again he didn't reply. "Hey!" she shouted again, this time banging quite violently on the door. He still did not reply, I imagine he felt very uncomfortable. "Do you have toilet paper in there?" she asked him loudly. "Yes. I'm fine," he said meekly. "Oh good," she said, and then she left. Now, I may be wrong due to my rather limited experience in the field of public toilets, but it seems to me that this cleaner is a little lacking when it comes to the subtlety needed for her job. Perhaps this is the way forward for toilet maintenance, but it seemed to me that she was making people’s visits to the toilets rather unenjoyable. |
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?
Click here for all the best posts.
Archives
I'm currently in the process of completely overhauling the archive system to make it more easy to use. Bear with me, it may look messy for a bit.
Anecdotes Funny & Silly Entries Archives
February 2016
Categories
All
Any Suggestions?
Give me them here.
|