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Text of the page (random words):
e going back to it to sharpen it up because it s supposed to be fun here then is computers can t make coffee enjoy and leave any comments down below the sound of birdsong filled the streets before the sample ended and it looped round again for another minute long duration desmond was the last person the sun would shine on the sleep of the last few hours had been interrupted not by any noise from the street outside or the late night tv his neighbours always watched but more the absence of any human activity his was the only street left illuminated two lamps standing until the end the traffic signals were turned off a few days ago the shops had left only the moonlight to cast shadow on the empty shelves desmond s notification had been slow in arriving once the idea of leaving earth had left a touch screen somewhere and the pictures of the settlements had circulated he had sat waiting looking out of his window each morning he saw more and more floors on the housing grids becoming vacant every time another light out and wind turbine still the eldest residents had been first forming a queue to get into the monorail terminals leading to the ports herbert down the corridor had refused to go whilst spending each evening shouting up at the night sky from his balcony desmond had ran into him one night outside the local shop i was born on earth and i ll bloody die on earth he growled whilst stabbing his walking stick forwards as if he were fencing a few weeks ago his wish was granted they didn t fill his house afterwards each evening the bright blue jet trails of the rockets had bled through the black desmond had grown to be familiar with looking out for the final scattering of colour as the ships left earth s atmosphere the final distant thump of another one entering space above was a comfort to him as one day he d be up there too this morning the skies were empty as even the clouds had given up flying overhead the blazing heat from the sun rays has already melting the tarmac across the road desmond could see the bubbles from his window looks like another warm one the familiar voice chimed in from the screen across the room with the usual tones of cheer morning theia said desmond still slightly unsure if he should be giving such wishes to a computer programme do you want a full weather report for the day the software enquired is it going to be you asking me to put lots of sunscreen on and avoid going out in the sun until this evening a silent few seconds followed as this questions was hurled through processors and memory that would be where i was going well in that case i think we can save it the window began to darken automatically shielding desmond from the harsh light a protective protocol in action your flight leaves in a few hours your last few bags are waiting at the space port having been checked in at 3 08am this morning thanks came the only mutter from desmond s mouth as he peered back to the tinted window at the sunlight bouncing off the electronic advertising boards on the building opposite his own personal adverts had been scrolling on these screens for so long now he could follow along with them word for word he had cut himself shaving around three weeks ago the bathroom mirror had recognised the blood and played him an advert for instant cut sealer a whole minute had passed by showing the miraculous properties of a sprayed layer of plastic across any size of wound after desond had answered the following survey the mirror had deemed it suitable to dispense a sticking plaster a free sample had turned up unannounced through his door not long afterwards but it remained unused life away from earth would surely not need cut sealer is this the end of the world asked desmond of the computer far from it it s a new start for you but what happens to all of this here desmond gestured to the outside world in what looked like a half hearted attempt at semaphore do you want the answer i do very well then desmond the coastal areas that aren t flooded already soon will be and the heat from the sun rays will take care of most of the rest desmond considered this information for a few seconds if he had stayed around on earth for any longer he would probably try to see if he could convince the computer to stop asking his permission in order to give him plain facts it had originally started with it suggesting he took an umbrella outside rather than just saying it was raining before long it was telling him about the benefits he could have by taking a long walk before actually telling him the trains had been cancelled over time the software had learned that desmond liked the plain facts it had also learned to not make him coffee in the mornings when the kitchen appliances had all been registered in the network the software had taken the liberty of ordering in the best selling coffee flavour in the city taking in a general method of preparation honed through the data received from over one thousand hours of consumer focus groups and only then splotting forth something that desmond could only describe as tar the easiest solution would have been to disconnect the network card from the back of the coffee maker but like all appliances it refused to work without one i shall heat the water for you came the robotic chirp just that nothing more the water sizzled inside the machine and the jet of black desmond slowly added the dark oily gloop and mixed it together he took a sip of the bitter concoction then smacked his lips together are they growing real coffee beans in the orbit he asked i m afraid i don t know for sure desmond my network doesn t stretch that far desmond took another sip and thought about the stations in orbit and how if they truly were meant to be the next step in mankind s journey they would surely be a space on each of them for growing some proper coffee the videos that had been sent back down showed whole forests being grown in large sections of the stations spotlights reflected off the water of streams and lakes as animated figures danced and ate picnics on the riverbanks all was perfectly possible when you were off the surface of the now crumbling earth he put down his coffee cup and was about to clean it in the sink until he remembered he wouldn t need it tomorrow morning the taxi is waiting outside said the computer desmond was about to jolt himself across the housing pod in his rush to get changed upon processing it further he came to the conclusion that the taxi wasn t exactly going to pick up anybody else afterwards he allowed himself the time to put on the last clothes he had that weren t in space by now a few minutes later he found himself adjusting his belt in the mirror the computer chimed in for what seemed like the final time i hope you enjoy your flight it s been a pleasure being with you these last few years do i get something like you when i arrive up there i don t believe they have the structure yet for such systems perhaps in time but you ll have to make your own coffee in the meantime i think i might be able to manage that desmond stepped out into the hallway thought initially about locking the door behind him but instead left the keys hanging in the lock before walking down the corridor hexenwulf the dreamer jan 10 2021 cripleh leave a comment i wrote another book more aptly i should say i finished it before i got to the end of the last rewrite of the book i ve been working on for the last four years on this site put simply writing about old wrestling shows became far easier than facing my own story and the many flaws it has hence nothing here since august i ve been podcasting i ve been miniature painting over on instagram i have written reviews on videogames alongside my son and i have been plotting how to write a text adventure game as the world caved in with a cocktail of covid and brexit these things felt like instant wins clamouring back to the coal face of aliens from other worlds and scottish tourist villages felt far too much of an uphill task it s a task that must begin again though especially as i m not that far away from a possible ending there s a chance my head is a bit out of practice with creative writing though so i might go and write something fairly short to get back up to speed if so it ll get posted here the very best to you and i hope you re all keeping safe and well remove by friction aug 2 2020 aug 2 2020 cripleh leave a comment a book seems a really big and all consuming thing right now having finished the latest draft a couple of weeks ago during lockdown i ve touched up a few chapters but not gone back to it since i ve taken to doing smaller writing tasks that provide much more of an instant gratification upon completing them i ll spent time reviewing a cheap game over on the video game blog my son and i keep i ll write some more about wrestling and put that up on bad education i ve also discovered single player role playing games during the lockdown one of which is scratching that writing itch just dandy right now it s called the machine by adira slattery and fen slattery and it s something of a revelation the machine involves the keeping of a journal detailing how your character makes the titular contraption it can be anything you want it to be in my case it s quite small like a pocket watch and able to sing songs from within you play the game alone but the idea is that once your character meets their demise you pass the journal onto a friend so they carry it on as somebody who has found or been given the same journal my current character is a discreet magician i figure he d have to be in order to keep his tricks under wraps you select two options from a list of about sixty jobs and characteristics crossing them off the lost so nobody else can choose them using a deck of playing cards you lift the card on top and the number and suit influences what has happened for example my first entry proper was the six of diamonds which gave me hateful and a sleepless night there followed a frantic half hour as i described my character pacing around his elaborate study in the early hours sketching his grand plan for the construction of the machine that would gain himmhis fortune after those thirty minutes i was done i could move on i had achieved something no long think times no sitting infront of a blank page and no going back to rewrite the machine is part game and part creative writing exercise and if you re a writer at a loose end or needing something of a writing based distraction then it s a good 5 to spend the book still hangs over me though and it s something of a problem to work on it knowing that there s a whole heap more to do before i get that done writing hit like a beer garden in motherwell jul 8 2020 cripleh leave a comment it turns out there is nothing quite like doing a chapter by chapter breakdown of your book to start a complete emotional rollercoaster at some points i thought it was all stitching together extremely well at others there was the feeling that nothing was going right and the whole thing had fell apart but at least now i have a list with each chapter and a couple of lines saying what does and doesn t work with each only one of them has the words delete this whole thing because it s terrible written across it so it s not that bad a score the first two chapters have already been rewritten and are actually now in a readable form it s just a matter of shining up the rest and making sure they stitch together well support your local author jul 7 2020 cripleh 1 comment i m not that far up the writing career ladder but i think it s still important that writers give support to others when the time comes with that in mind i bring you some local news of a retired policeman from dumfries and galloway publishing his first children s book community cop colin keeping safe by martin greenlees is published on the 28th of july and follows the story of two friends libby and connor who get separated from their mothers whilst out shopping the pair remember the community police officer who visited their school and told them to always think of the word uniform the search begins to find a safe stranger to help them become reunited with their worried mothers the book is a really good way of encouraging kids to stay safe and to understand that the community police officers are there to help them the book can be purchased from amazon and waterstones always handle live plants with care jun 30 2020 cripleh leave a comment each night if the mood takes me i ll sit down with a big pad of paper and my laptop and work through the current version of the book chapter by chapter to see how it s working the disadvantage to pressing on with any rewrite and never looking back or stopping is that some of the ideas contained in the early going have since been scrapped completely later on and now mean nothing there has been one instance of removing a sentence in one chapter which felt like an easy decision only to find that it means that half of the next chapter is now redundant it s has shaken me a little bit whilst the hardest part is done and i no longer have to deal with any blank pages it does mean that i m discovering all the bugs certain characters change mindset on a dime right now and it s those sort of problems i m trying to iron out momentum is important though stove top trouser press jun 13 2020 jun 14 2020 cripleh leave a comment when i was in primary school there was a book club each term a few weeks before the holidays were due to start the teacher would pass around a small catalogue of titles that they were currently selling due to it being a school promotion each book had about twenty or thirty percent off the retail price you d put a tick next to whatever you wanted to buy go home and convince your parents to supply the money which would then be passed on during the next school day at the start of the next term the library van would pull up outside and drop off a big box with the all the books in there was your book or indeed books depending on if your parents felt generous that day or not it was through this method that i discovered quite a few titles including the fighting fantasy series but there was one from that time that i actually rediscovered a few days ago stuck in a cardboard box from my house move six months ago i recall wanting this one as soon as i clapped eyes on it it has a price of 3 99 on the inside cover and it must have been about 3 50 or so to me at the time it s a collection of some short science fiction stories alongside some excerpts from longer titles there s a section from war of the worlds which was probably my first exposure to h g wells there s the wind from the sun by arthur c clarke and also how we were tracked by a tripod by john christopher i ve sat for a few nights now just reading over these stories and reminding myself how brilliant they are i m rewriting the book now trying my level best to get it somewhere near the level presented here versi...