Steve the Pole

I finished lesson thirty of my thirty lesson Polish language audio course. I averaged a lesson a week, I think.

Does this mean you're supercharged with Slovak enunciations? I hear you ask.

Well, I can certainly speak more Polish now than when I started. But what a fiendishly difficult language Polish is to learn. I can ask for things like where the bathroom is, and order drinkies like a native; I can book a hotel room and find my way around the railway station. But it strikes me to be anywhere near conversational in such a language would need total immersion probably forever. It's a language dreamed up by someone during one of life's more fluid lunchtimes.

I should have known that when the guide said of grammar: Don't worry if you have to stick to the nominative case—the Poles will understand you and make exceptions for you as a foreigner— because it's not like the Poles themselves speak all the various cases correctly anyway.

I should have said: hang on, if they don't, then what chance have I?

I'm not a natural when it comes to learning languages, which is odd really as I do consider myself to have a love of words and how they're strung together (isn't that a definition of writer, after all?). But one thing this exercise has done is to have given me a renewed respect for my mother tongue.

Having seen first hand what the Poles may do, I'll never abuse English again.

Well, hardly.

A Very Odd Brain

I received a Facebook comment today that I have a 'very odd brain'. And I love it. It was from Wendy Darling who was commenting on how much she'd enjoyed reading my novel Digging up Donald. I think writers of comic works probably do need an odd brain.

I loved also that Wendy spoke of Storm Constantine's words when pressing the book on Wendy—'(She) kept saying: "You have to read it, I can't describe!"'. It's really gratifying that someone with Storm's track record in publishing would think like that of my work.

I dip back into reading Donald myself from time to time, which is odd as I rarely re-read anything else I've written. Maybe it's that I have a great fondness for the lad. Or maybe it's I'm a closet narcissist. And I always get a thrill when someone passes comment on it—good or bad. So thank you, Wendy, for brightening my day.

Of What Do Iron Men Think?

Of what do Iron Men think,
when staring silently out to sea?


This is a most unusual work of art. He is made from cast iron, and is one of an installation of one hundred such iron men fixed five hundred metres apart into the sands of Crosby beach, about ten miles to the north of Liverpool. When the tide is low, they stand like sentinels against the receding sea. Twice daily, when the tide rises, they drown without fuss or cry.

Of what do Iron Men think,
when staring silently out to sea?
As the tide turns, and the waters rise,
and the mud grips ever tighter to their feet.


The installation, the work of Antony Gormley, is called "Another Place". The men are made from casts of Gormley's own body. They stare towards America. Previously, they'd been exhibited in Germany, Norway, and Belgium, and were due to be relocated to New York. That will not now happen, and the work will remain permanently in Crosby.

Of what do Iron Men think,
when staring silently out to sea?
As the tide turns, and the waters rise,
and the mud grips ever tighter to their feet.
Do they sail to Another Place,
where iron lungs don't leak and burn?

There were "someone's trapped and drowning" calls when they first went in. And shipping needed buoys to warn of them just submerged. Three were moved as they upset birds breeding nearby. And the curious thing is they look different at different times, as if storms and calm seas affect them in unseen ways.

Of what do Iron Men think?

There's a story for me in there somewhere.

A Tale of Two... erm, A Prostitute

I wrote a story about a prostitute specifically with submitting to a forthcoming anthology in mind. It's done and dusted and duly polished, but I have a dilemma. The guidelines say (paraphrased) "…despite the prostitution theme, I'm not looking for pornography or erotica".

I'd argue that whilst I've pulled no punches with this story it's neither of those (unless it's a particularly weird form of erotica :-)

I'm toying with the idea of saying this in the cover letter. And my dilemma is I've never felt the need to justify the content of a story before, nor actually suggest in a cover letter that the story might be rejected as possibly too brutal, too risqué.

I'll probably just send it as normal and allow it to stand or fall at the Editor's whim. But it's been an interesting thought as to how I, as a writer, relate to the content of my own stories.

A well hung parliament

What a strange week in politics.

No one I voted for "got in"—either in the national or local elections. Maybe I'm a jinx. Maybe I'm bribe material—how much for me to vote for your opponent—guaranteed non-election for him or her, squire?

Or maybe as politically savvy I'm something of a nonce.

It feels deeply dissatisfying, a hung parliament. Hung parliaments always produce toothless governments. And there's something disquieting about the sudden accord each of the major parties have for the ever-third-choice Liberal Democrats. It's all rather smarmy, this toadying, even by politicians' standards.

And then a part of me wonders if this was not meant to be. I was, and remain, deeply suspicious of the Conservatives, particular in the speed and depth of cuts they'd likely impart upon us as they try and restore some semblance of normality to the country's coffers. It worried me that the first three years or so of a majority Conservative government would see cutbacks on a scale ruthless and unprecedented.

But now, if they secure a working, minority government, I see another election surely within a year. And in that year the Conservatives would have undertaken some particularly unpopular policy making. But now, given they will need to keep the electorate as sweet as they can for this early re-election, perhaps it will rein them in a little. Or maybe it won't.

And what an opportunity this is for the Liberal Democrats to force home their ever popular chestnut of Proportional Representation. Ironically, given the Liberal Democrat's overall poor performance this time out, they might snatch the greatest victory they thought they'd never see, that of voting reform.

And in the meantime the financial markets wobble and dance.

A strange week in politics indeed.

Size Matters

Well, actually quantity matters. According to last week's New Scientist, it's not quality of content that makes for a successful Blog but quantity.

People, it seems, will visit a prolific blogger more regularly over a, shall we say, more selective blogger even if they feel that the prolific blogger is talking tosh.

I wonder what this means for Life, the Universe, and Everything?

Promiscuous Women can cause Earthquakes

I read this on the BBC news website, so it has to be true, doesn't it?

It seems an Iranian cleric has suggested promiscuity amongst women is to blame for earthquakes. He said:

"Many women who do not dress modestly
lead young men astray and spread adultery
in society which increases earthquakes."

And I thought it was tectonic plate nonsense.

I wonder what causes a tornado.